


Bee-tober

by FeugoFox42



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dungeons & Dragons, Bad Dreams, Bad Puns, Based on a True Story, Beacon Days, Bizzy Buzzy Friends, D&D AU, Domestic, Dragon AU, Dunce - Freeform, End of Series AU, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Lastminute.com, Letters, Light Angst, Making up for lost time, Nightmare, Plants, RWBY D&D, Soul Mate AU, Soulmate AU, Star Wars AU, Stargazing, The Videogame Tournament No One Asked For, Two sides of the same story, Working on Improving, Yangst, cooking disaster, dragon - Freeform, plant moms, superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:35:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 35,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26734447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeugoFox42/pseuds/FeugoFox42
Summary: 31 Days in October. 31 Random Words. 31(ish) AUs of NOTHING BUT BEES!
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 135
Kudos: 192





	1. Inn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blake_Belladonna_Defence_Force](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blake_Belladonna_Defence_Force/gifts).



> Inspired by the fantabulous Blake_Belladonna_Defence_Force and her batshit crazy idea and words prompts, I thought I'd delve back into the world of Fanfiction writing with a month of Bee Fics!
> 
> Let's get this row on the showed with Prompt Numero Uno

“And you’re sure this will be fine?”

“Relax Blake,” Yang reassured, “I’ve done this trip like a hundred times; if we leave Beacon grounds by nine-”

“Which I’m not particularly happy about,” the Faunus grumbled as she folded the last of her things into her bag and zipped it up.

“Oh hush, you’ve had earlier starts. Heck, Beacon had earlier starts than this.”

“And none of them I was particularly fond of. But go on.”

With a good natured scoff and roll of her eyes, Yang continued explaining. Blake had heard it all once before - it was the reason she was even agreeing to go with Yang tomorrow as is. 

Both she and Ruby had convinced the Black and White pair to join them at their house in Patch for a Staycation over the semester break, and while Weiss was seemingly insisting on bringing enough clothing to last her far longer than they were all intending to stay (though not in excess as she was wont to do at the start of their time at Beacon), Blake was far more selective with her clothing choices, which Yang mentioned was perfect. She had been meaning to get Bumblebee tuned up properly but never got the opportunity, so this was a great excuse to take a ride back home and get that seen to.

And on accounts that there was one over-packer in the group and the fact that Bumblebee was a  _ motorcycle _ and not any sort of car or truck, Yang and Blake opted to set out a day ahead for a ride through Vale to get there at about the same time as Weiss and Ruby would via airship.

Blake, for one, didn’t mind.

“I’m glad you have this all planned out Yang, are you sure I won’t need anything more?”

The blonde waved a hand with a grin. “It’ll be fine Blake. Weather’s clear all through the week, and we have two days to get to the coast for our ferry ride over to Patch; we have nothing to worry about.”

~~~~~~~~~~

The Inn clerk couldn’t help themselves glancing up at the two girls as they stood the other side of their desk. In no uncertain terms, they looked terrible. 

One of them looked like the weight of the world was quite literally pressing down on her shoulders with how far she was hunching forward, arms drooped as if weights forcefully dragged them towards the ground. The other, a Faunus lady, wrapped her arms around herself in either embarrassment, fear or just to keep some body heat. 

And every part of their bodies that wasn't their heads were drenched.

“There y’are; one room for ye’s for the night,” they offered as they passed the keycard over to them. All they got was a disgruntled and fed up “thanks” from them both as they trudged their dripping wet bodies through the lobby towards the stairs and their room. “There’s hot showers in ev’ry room!” they called out as they reached the first step.

Brothers knew they needed one.

~~~~~~~~~~

The rain just did not stop. Thunder rattled around them like Nora’s stomach when you mention ‘All you can eat’ within earshot, and the lightning flashed brilliantly across the sky. Not exactly ideal.

“Ooo-kay,” Yang began as she exited the bathroom, hair wrapped in a towel to dry, the guilt in her voice clear, “so I may have been a little too enthusiastic with the whole ‘nice weather for the whole trip’ thing.”

Blake looked back at her, irritation in her eyes but no words to express it on her lips.

“Look, I’m sorry Blake. Really, I am. I just need to make sure we’re on that ferry by 4pm tomorrow else we won’t be until the end of the week. I checked what the weather was going to be like back at Beacon for the first part of our journey, and it was fine. I checked what the weather was going to be like in Patch,  _ that _ was fine. And even the place I had planned for us to stop over at a few miles down the road was supposed to be okay too! This storm came out of nowhere, and I’m really sorry we have to stay he-”

“Yang?”

The brawler stopped.

“You’re rambling.”

“Oh… heh, so I am.” She raised her arm behind her head and scratched, a nervous tick of hers. Blake, on seeing that, rose from her seat at the window and crossed the room to her partner. She just smiled as she wrapped her arms around Yang lovingly. “Uh…”

“You’re not at fault Yang.”

“But I-”

“ _ Not. _ At fault,” she reaffirmed. Sensing the tension her partner still held, Blake took Yang’s hand and walked to the bed, and got her to sit on the edge facing the window. The sound of hundreds of raindrops a second hitting the glass made for a pleasant and constant bit of background noise as the Faunus began massaging the stress out of Yang’s shoulders. “Yes, you maybe could have checked the weather a little more thoroughly to make sure we’d not get caught in this, or so we could better dress for this, but ultimately we would have driven through this anyway. Whether we would have stopped here or stopped at the other place down the road, we couldn’t have rode much longer in this anyway. Safely, that is.”

Yang could only chuckle; Blake was right. 

“I would rather get to your Dad’s house a day late because we got caught in this storm, than not get there at all because we tried too hard to push through it.”

“I’d rather get there bone dry,” Yang retorted. Blake giggled, then wrapped her arms around Yang’s shoulders and pulled the both of them back onto the bed properly, bringing laughs from the pair of them.

The pair eventually relaxed into a comfortable silence, just staring at one another with dumb grins on their faces. “You can’t win all the time Yang.”

“Oh yeah?” 

Not falling for the bait, Blake continued. “We might as well just accept we’re here for the long run. Let’s get some food, get some rest, then if the weather’s good tomorrow morning we’ll just have to set out a little earlier to get to the coast, won’t we?”

“You telling me you  _ like _ me riding at dangerous speeds, Belladonna?” Yang inquired with a raised eyebrow. All she got in return was a smirk.

“I do like riding in the dry though. First chance we get, we’re buying raincoats.”

Yeah, that’s probably a smart move.


	2. Pottery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, Day Number Dos, and we've got Pottery.
> 
> I half debated making a Hogwarts AU, but with ridiculously off-brand naming conventions like "Hermerner Grughnjer" of something of the like, so it would be Harry Potter, but not Harry Potter, thus making it... Pottery.  
> It was a terrible idea - especially with She-Who-Shall-Not-Make-Another-Conscious-Penny-Off-Me-Again's Umbridgian Stance on anything non-cisgendered - and thus it was one idea I backed away from promptly. 
> 
> Speaking of prompts; enjoy this instead!

Yang was in a huff. 

Like, a proper huff.

She may have been the youngest in their friend group (Ruby notwithstanding. It kind of went without saying though; the sixteen year old girl being a second year student at a Huntsman Academy meant for those aged seventeen and up was far and away youngest person in their friend group), but at the moment she was acting far more like a child than she was a woman who was turning nineteen in a few weeks.

The whole Bullhead ride was… well, Blake  _ wanted _ to describe it as tense. That would require there being some form of tension being in the air though, and Blake knew that this wasn’t something between her and Yang. One moment, she was her usual peppy and loving self, the next she was as she was now; silent and stewing in an anger bubbling under the surface.

Blake hadn’t been Yang’s partner for the better part of seven months and her teammate for nearly eighteen months to ignore this sort of behaviour switch like this.

And fortunately for the brawler, as the Bullhead coasted down to the landing pad and stopped about as gracefully as a giant flying machine could, her partner had recently discovered just the place.

“Yang?” The woman looked up slowly, eyes of what Blake would affectionately describe as calming seas of amethyst now boiled with the fiery specs of glowing crimson hidden in the undercurrent of choppy waves, and focussed on Blake. The Faunus’ tone was not one of someone coddling her - she was more than aware that Yang had a very thorough disliking to being treated like glass - but was instead a practiced voice of someone who knew she needed to tread lightly around everything, with a mutual knowing that Yang was essentially a walking time bomb when she got like this. She offered out her hand as she continued, “we need to do a little bit of walking, alright? This was the closest drop off point to where I’d like to go.” 

Yang eventually took the outstretched hand of her partner - Blake’s grip firm to ground her but not so tight as to pull her along - and walked alongside her partner.

Their initial leg of the trek was silent between the Bumbleby pair. Pedestrians passed them by, but to them they may have just been shadowy people with no faces. All Blake was focussed on was how Yang was acting, and Yang truthfully was paying no mind to anyone.

“Yang? Do you… do you want to talk about it?”

“Blake, I’m  _ fine! _ I just-” she caught herself before things went too far, but in that brief moment they both knew that a) Yang was not fine, and b) this was not something to be brought up anytime soon.

“It’s fine, I shouldn’t have asked,” Blake acknowledged, the tiniest of twinges in her eyes as the pain of Yang suddenly squeezing her hand with the strength at times the blonde forgot she possessed shot through her nervous system and causing that involuntary twitch of the muscles. She thanked whatever Gods were listening for Aura, but that sting was still going to be there for a while. She also thanked them for giving her this idea now, before things got ugly. “We’re just going to keep on walking.”

“Yeah.”

The couple continued on for another twenty minutes until Blake, spotting their destination, started to smile. Since leaving the Bullhead, Blake had been coaxing Yang in the right direction with gentle pushes and pulls so as to not be dragging her anywhere. But now that was pretty much out of the window, as she dragged her girlfriend towards a place called ‘ _ The Nettled Vase _ ’.

“Pottery?” Yang asked with absolutely zero hint of enthusiasm for this trek’s ultimate destination.

“No, shh, trust me on this one.”

Reluctantly, Yang did just that. Blake booked them in for a session, then made sure both she and Yang had signed waivers, then got… dressed in lightweight painter’s gear and goggles?

“Blake?”

“Shshshshhhh!” came the overly eager - especially for Blake - reply. The rutt Yang had been stuck in was definitely being shifted somewhat, but only because she was worried what exactly it was she had been signed up to.

“Welcome you two. Please, enjoy yourselves, and stay safe in there.” The employee then opened a door behind them, shifting the curtain on the other side and ushering the Trainee Huntresses through. Around one corner to the left then another to the right, lay before them was an array of plates, sugar glass bottles, vases, frames, as well as a few other, larger things.

“Blake?” The Faunus looked back innocently enough, but it was clear she couldn’t keep this in much longer than she apparently already had.

“I know you haven’t been yourself for a bit, and it usually ends up with things kind of… exploding-” Blake could only offer a blush and a shrug at that admission, “-but I found this place not too long ago. It’s a Stress Room; you let out all your stress and anger onto cheap and easy to replicate pieces of pottery and furniture.” Yang wondered around looking at everything, feeling out all of the vases and flowerpots and breakaway glass bottles they had around as Blake continued. “You get an outlet for your anger that doesn’t result in detention or anything, and it also gives me an excuse to take you out on a date that doesn’t involve anyone else.”

Yang turned to her partner in amazement, slowly crossing the room with a growing smile, and hugged her.

“Thank you.”

“I love you. You know that, right?”

“Of course I do,” Yang answered, mischievous grin growing on her face. “Which is why I do this out of love, not of malice.” Yang swung down at Blake’s with one of the breakaway bottles they had provided, aiming to shatter the green prop between her girlfriend’s feline ears.

There was no shattering sound, just a gentle  _ *fwosh* _ as a shadow clone took her place.

“Blaaaake~” Yang whined.

The Faunus stood leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, smugly looking back at Yang’s failed attempt at a sneak attack. “What? There’s a bunch of things around here to smash, why must you throw things at me? Also, you are not good at stealth at all.”

“It’s a good thing I have better traits then, isn’t it?” she agreed, flipping the bottle around to hold by the body of it instead of the neck. “Like my ability to smash things!” The glass exploded on impact with the floor, earning a small shriek from Blake at the sheer ferocity of the smash. “Yeah,  _ this _ is more like it!”

All in all, Blake thought that this was a good find. Waste of good pottery though.


	3. Leak

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Three, and we got the word Leak.
> 
> I don't like leaning on the early and totally unrepresentative stereotypes I used to as a babby fanfic writer when the world was new and I didn't know my style from the person whose stories I binged, but this one kind of begged for a callback.

“I’m mad at you.”

“Why?”

“ _ WHY?! _ ” Yang flinched at that, the pounding headache she had not making the noise any better. She knew full well why. These jokes may have been just a little bit too much. “Yang Xiao Long, you have caused me to age  _ years _ in mere weeks because of your ridiculous antics, that’s why I’m bloody mad at you! I mean, look at you!” 

“Oh come on Bla-”

“NO! You do  _ not _ get to play the innocent one here!” It was fair to say, Blake was fuming right now. Yang was certain that, had this been one of the cartoons she used to watch as a kid, her face would be even redder than it already was and there would be steam shooting out of her ears with a train whistle sound effect added on top.

_ Which set of ears though? _ she thought to herself.  _ No, bad Yang! Questions for later, aka when your girlfriend isn’t trying to kill you twice over with a stare. _

“Let’s start with --”

~~~~~~~~~~

“Blake!” Yang all but screamed as she burst down the door to the couple’s apartment, eliciting a scream out of the dark haired woman, “Someone’s leaked our sex tape!”

“What?!” Blake rushed over to Yang, grabbing her scroll for her hand to see. “How could this have happened, Weiss said she made sure we had the most up to date security that could be provided.” 

“I don’t know, but I have the link saved so we can get quick access to it. Maybe there was a patch missed?”

“That’s impossible!” Blake countered harshly, “we’d receive that patch. If I find out who did this, I will make it my mission to make them hurt for what they…” Blake stopped suddenly. An evil, yet knowing, grin grew on the blonde brawler’s face as Blake turned towards her slowly.

No words were said - no words  _ needed _ to be said - as Blake raised the scroll up to show Yang what she found. Surprising no one, Yang didn’t need to be shown, as on the scroll screen in front was an image of her own creation. 

Two long, green  _ Allium _ genus vegetables, one with a long mane of golden blonde hair and a single large green leaf on its right side, the other poorly coloured in to be a much darker green than the other, with a set of terribly rendered on cat ears and a completely jarring addition of a bare human butt on show, all of that set on a stereotypical ‘bedroom set’ and various intimate accessories lying around the photo.

“You.  **_Leek_ ** _ -ed _ . Our Sex Tape, did you Yang?”

“Ha ha,” the blonde joked, shooting a couple of finger guns at her partner, “gotcha Blake.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“You still are getting me back for that one, aren’t you?” Yang asked innocently enough. “We could just kiss and make u-” Blake just glared.  _ Yeah, shut up Yang, the hole you’ve dug yourself is deep enough already. _

“Or what about --”

~~~~~~~~~~

It had been four days since Blake had been back home. 

She and Ruby had offered to go help out the village of Calembour due to a rather large group of Creeps appearing out of nowhere and troubling the folks in the vicinity. 

It was a decently steady enough mission; numbers were never too massive, and they had a more senior Huntsman in the village there to help them where they could with protecting the villagers. Unfortunately the Creeps needed to be tracked down to their initial location and taken out at the source, and that was the most tiring thing of all, else they would just keep coming back.

Hospitality was pleasant in Calembour, and the people there were mostly accommodating of her heritage (the handful that weren’t initially soon changed their tune the first night of attacks after the Ladybug pair settled down for their stay), but sometimes you really miss home and the comforts that come with it.

“Yang?” Blake called out into their apartment, the fatigue in her voice not allowing her much more than a minor bit of projection as she began slipping her coat off. “I’m home.” 

Silence.

Blake let her feline ears rotate, listening out for any signs of her girlfriend’s presence in her vicinity. Nothing.

_ Huh, _ she thought to herself, hanging her coat up on the hooks by their door and moving on to her boots. Blake didn’t make it a surprise that this was when she was going to be getting home - she was in need of cuddles and/or sleep in her own bed (preferably ‘and’), and Yang was normally very good about being home to provide that sort of thing after a mission like this.

Glancing over to where her boots were kept, she saw her coat was lying in a heap on the ground. Chalking her lack of proper motor skills up to her tiredness, she put her boots away, picked up her coat once more and put it back on the hooks at the door.

Well, she thought she did, until there was an unsettling  **_*SNAP!*_ ** sound from where her coat was meant to be hanging.

“What?!” she cried out, jumping back and unsheathing her weapon. 

That was when she saw her wall - completely empty of the pairs’ usual jackets and coats, and even the hooks they had installed there upon their purchase of the place. Instead, there were-

“Blake?” Yang’s head popped round the corner at the noise. A sweet smile grew on her face upon seeing her girlfriend. She walked towards Blake to greet her. “Hey, how did the mission g-”

“Yang,” she interrupted, weapon still drawn as she stared at the wall, “what are those things?”

“What’s what?” She got closer until she stood by Blake’s side. “Oh, those! Yeah, those are our new c- **leeks** ,” she announced proudly. “What’d you think?” 

Blake didn’t answer.

“Huh Blake, what do you think of ‘em?”

No movement, no sound. Nothing.

“Blake?”

The bedroom door slammed shut, making Yang jump backwards into Blake, who disappeared in a whoosh of smoke, the shadow clone finally dissipating.

~~~~~~~~~~

“And no,” Blake jumped in before Yang had time to jump in with anything witty, “you are  _ still _ going to be on the couch. Especially after today with --”

~~~~~~~~~~

“Yang?” Blake called from the kitchen, searching through all of their cupboards with confusion.

“Yeah Blake, what’s up?” 

“Mind coming out here, I’ve lost something.” Yang made an affirmative noise and started making her way from the bathroom to the kitchen. “You know how I was supposed to be making us soup for dinner tonight?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been looking everywhere for one of the ingredients that I  _ know _ I bought, but I can’t find it anywh… what the fuck have you done with your hair?” Before her, Yang stood with her perfectly wild mane of hair now smooth and glossy, all while she was brushing it with, “is that my missing ingredient?”

“In answer to your first question, I’ve s **leek** ed my hair back!” she grinned. “In answer to your second, ye-” Yang never got to finish that sentence, as Blake struck her so hard and fast that she didn’t have enough time to raise her Aura, knocking her out cold.

~~~~~~~~~~

“So I take it you’re still mad at me then?” 

“Yes I am mad at you!” Blake bit back, the fury in her voice rivalling Yang’s own.

“I guess you can say things are looking…” she pulled another leek - this one painted entirely black with a sad face painted on in grey - out of nowhere as she finished the punchline, “b **leak** for me?”

~~~~~~~~~~

No one attended Yang’s funeral. They agreed she had it coming.


	4. Protection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Protection for Day 4.  
> (No, I wasn't even going to dream of doing THAT, dirty minded bastad.)
> 
> Was a little hesitant to include a chapter that was this one sided in a Bees Month story, but the flashback to THE Bee scene in Volume 3 made up for it

Nights in Kuo Kuana were never exactly what people would describe as ‘pleasant’.

To call them anything even remotely close would be underplaying everything about this island the Faunus called ‘Home’, and even  _ that _ was a painful can of worms to open.

Menagerie as an island was nearly two thirds nigh-uninhabitable desert, meaning those residing on the island were forced into the remaining third of its space. Even though there was enough space for everyone who came here, it always felt like a slap in the face for Faunuskind to be given a place of their own on Remnant that was nearly 70% useless.

That thought process was haunting Blake now as she tossed and turned at night, her olive skin already damp with the sweat of her dream’s pleasantries, her breathing shallow and erratic. 

She saw herself, lying on the floor with Adam looming over her. It was this dream again. It replayed every day for her; sometimes in parts, sometimes multiple times. Sometimes it wouldn’t let her escape - she knew where this ended, and she wanted out, but something anchored her to the scene.

_ “This could've been our day! Can't you see that!?” _

_ “I never wanted this! I wanted equality! I wanted  _ **_peace!_ ** _ ” _

_ “What you want is impossible! But I understand, because all I want is you, Blake.” _

Blake remembered this part, she began to raise her weapon again, only for him to kick it out of her hand, knocking her over once again. She wanted to run. She told Adam that she didn’t, but she so wanted to run far, far away from here. 

_ “I will make it my mission to destroy everything you love.” _

_ “Blake!”  _

Oh no... 

_ “Blake! Where are you!?” _

No, no! Yang run! RUN!

_ “Starting with her.” _

It didn’t matter.

She knew how it went from here, and in her spectral state she was anchored, tears streaming down her face as she remained there, fighting invisible chains to let her go as she heard herself scream in anguish as Wilt pierced her abdomen. 

_ “Get  _ **_away from her!!_ ** _ ” _

_ No... please… _

She wasn’t sure which one of her said that - she never could remember when she had to relive this whole thing.

As Adam sliced the attacking Yang’s arm clean off, Moonslice continued on. The burning red and black wave of destruction bisected Blake’s astral self. She felt the energy course through her body, cleaving her in two from the shoulder down to her hip. 

The scream she let out was otherworldly, it was fearful and anguish and pain and everything she was feeling now and then.

“Blake! Blake, baby girl, wake up.” 

Amber eyes shot open as she shot up in bed, everything cold yet warm, numb yet on fire.

“Blake, talk to me. Breathe baby girl, just breathe.”

She couldn’t do that.

All Blake could do was cry into her mother’s shoulder.

Yang tried protecting her. Back then, all she was doing was protecting her. And this is how she repaid that kindness. She ran away to the farthest corner of Remnant, hid away at home with her family.

She felt that she didn’t deserve Yang’s protection that night.

“You did, Blake.”

Oh, right. Mum was there. And she probably said that part out loud.

“Yang protected you with everything she had to give. Do you know why?” Snotty nosed and wildly unprepared for questions at gods-dammit-it’s-too-early-for-this-o’clock, she just shook her head. “Because you are worth fighting for. Because she loves you and cares for you so much that nothing was going to get in her way to prove that.”

Blake managed a watery laugh from that.

She knew Yang loved her.  _ She _ loved Yang.

It’s a shame that that revelation came at the cost of their friendship, and from the mouth of a person - a monster - who felt like he took the right to call Yang a friend away from her.


	5. Countryside

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look alive with prompt five, Countryside
> 
> Little tougher to think of something for this one, but I'm happy with this one. Hope y'all are too!

“Come on Blake,” Yang called back eagerly, her boots crunching against the gravel on the path ahead of her, “this is going to be so fun!”

“Sure, trekking through woods with my girlfriend in search for something truly amazing and life changing,” Blake deadpanned back. “Sounds just like initiation all over again.”

“Yeah, only with less Grimm, no hard set time limit, and you’re now my girlfriend instead of some chick I’d just met the night before.”

“‘Some chick’, am I?” Realising the mistake from the tone of her voice, Yang turned back around to apologise, only to have her words caught in her mouth as - just like initiation - she was face to face with a smirking Blake Belladonna, calmly holding her weapon inches from Yang’s throat. “That’s what I thought.”

Yang audibly gulped as her freckled cheeks grew darker with a growing blush, a nervous chuckle bubbling up. “You know, you really don’t make things easy for me.”

“Aw, does Yang need me to go easy on her?” she mocked, lowering and sheathing her blade.

“Blake, that was kinda hot what you just did and I am having trouble functioning now despite the walk ahead of us; yes I would like you to go easy on me!” Blake’s cheeks also grew darker at Yang’s admission. “I mean, we should get going.” Yang turned tail and walked off at a faster than usual pace, prompting Blake to jog up behind her to take her hand as they headed out.

The pair made a decent pace along the path through the woods, comfortable in the silence between them. In the time they had been together as friends and partners, and even as girlfriends, there was always this mutual understanding between the two of them. The knowledge that sometimes, there was no need for words; their presence was enough for them both. Words ruined the moment that they had.

But eventually, words were needed, as they made it through the end of the woods and out into the open once more. Blake removed herself and jogged forward to the fence in front of them to stare out at the sight before them - the woods opened out to a view of large rolling hills, some brilliant yellow, others a softer, more earthy gold, each one framed with a fence of bushes and a smattering of trees across them all, going on for miles and miles, as far as Blake could see.

“Oh my Gods…” she muttered breathlessly, amber eyes gazing out in wonder.

“I know, pretty cool, right?”

“Yang, this is… I don’t believe it.”

“Yeah, things like this lost their punch for me in my teenage years, but I still enjoy taking my friends out to see them every once in a while.” She turned to Blake, about to continue, only to see her looking out at the landscape close to tears. “Blake, what’s wrong?”

With a sniffle, Blake spoke, still looking out. “I’ve never really experienced this sort of thing before. The countryside, that is.” Yang honestly looked taken aback at that, but Blake clearly needed to get this off her chest, so she said nothing and let her continue. “When I was in the White Fang, we’d always be stationed deep within the woods and forests of places like this. Ad-” she physically flinched when she said his name, hating the involuntary response. But, she pressed on, even as the first tears began falling down her face. “Adam… always made sure that we were focussed on the mission. There was only planning, scouting and running the mission. There was never downtime, and when there was we were back at any main headquarters we had established, again usually hidden away. I had been around here so many times, but I had never really experienced it. I…” That was all she managed before the tears came out full force.

Yang eased Blake down to the ground, letting her cry into her shoulder. It hurt Yang so  _ so _ much to see her partner - this strong, selfless woman who managed to escape a relationship that still to this day has negative and lasting effects on her - in so much pain. She coaxed as many tears out of Blake as she could; they were there for minutes, but the world would have to wait for them.

“So, you’ve never really been in the countryside proper, have you?” Blake tearfully shook her head, looking like a scared child more than the warrior Yang grew close to. “What about back home?”

“Kuo Koana is more of a tropical island; our equivalent of the countryside was a giant desert with Grimm so deadly seeing one was near enough a death sentence.”

“O...kay, remind me never to go there.” Yang was glad that got a chuckle out of Blake. She moved so that she could cup Blake’s jaw tenderly and look her in the eyes. “Listen, I love you. I love you, and I want to make up for all that time he took away from you, okay?” She placed a loving kiss on Blake’s forehead to remind her of that promise. “Now, seeing as you have never really done the whole countryside thing, how’s about we continue on our walk? 

“That sounds lovely,” Blake smiled, taking Yang’s hands and being helped up off the floor.

“We’ll make plans for next time to do something more adventurous out here, but for now, I think just a walk will do.” Blake simply smiled more.


	6. Rage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoooooo boy! Day Six, Rage!
> 
> Y'all, I spent WAAY to long on this one for my own good. Like, I'm not even kidding. And I have never played a single game - all of this knowledge or lack thereof has come through 400+ hours of Osmosis thanks to a bunch of nerdy ass voice actors sitting around and playing... well, I'll let you read and find out :)
> 
> And, my first proper AU in Bee-tober! Only 50 more to go until I'm just like Defence ;P

Young Ruby Rose - the valiant Aasimar leader of Team RWBY - put on quite the show explaining to fellow members of the Beacon Guild they had met out in town that night of her party’s most recent adventure to the Emerald Forest. She told the tale so masterfully and captured the attention of all who listened so easily, a simple passerby could easily mistake her for a Bard. That was of course if they did not pay any mind to the glaive swung triumphantly over her shoulder as she spoke. 

The black and red haired Battle Master recounted the daring trials and tribulations of her team tracking down and coming up with a plan to face the Otyugh they had personally been contracted to eliminate, until a thought struck her mind. 

“Oh yeah, speaking of,” the Aasimar mentioned, her 100mph train of thought coming to a halt on a copper piece as she turned to her friend Jaune, a Hill Dwarf she became very close with on their first day at the guild, “Jaune? Weiss had a bit of a nasty first run in with the Otyugh; it got the jump on us and bit her when we weren’t quite prepared, I think she might be poisoned.”

“Oh dear,” Jaune replied, stroking his beard absentmindedly, “that’s not great. I thought she was just abstaining from celebrating today, I didn’t think to ask if there was an actual reason. Where is she now?” 

“We took her back to the Guild Hall. She said she was fine, but Guildmaster Goodwitch warned us about this monster before we set out to take it down; this thing’s poison is liable to potentially kill her in a few months if she’s lucky, a couple of days if she’s not. Even if we kept her stocked up on potions or healing spells, it won’t keep her alive any longer with that poison in her system. I feel bad asking you, but would you be okay doing something for her please? I know we have Peach we could call on, but she is on a hunt with another team quite a trek across the continent, and oth-”

“Ruby,” he reassured, his hand coming to rest on her shoulder, “it’s fine. I’d never let her get that far along, and I don’t mind helping a friend.” 

Jaune initially joined the Beacon Guild to build his combat skills and fight in large battles, and to win over the hearts of the ladies (heck, he even tried right at the start of their time at the Guild to court the High Elf of Ruby’s team with music, but with very little success on both the courting and the musical front), but found early on that he wasn’t exactly cut out for that sort of thing like the rest of his party. While he was no slouch in a tussle, most everyone else he had the pleasure of calling his friend could wipe the floor with him in a one-on-one fight. But what he lacked in raw combat prowess, he made up for with his skills in healing. 

“Besides, my team wanted to do a bit of wandering around today anyways, as you can see,” he gestured around him - none of his three teammates were anywhere to be seen, “so I have time to spend helping out.” Ruby’s infectious smile was all he needed as thanks - she had a way with people like that. 

The Hill Dwarf turned to Ruby’s remaining two teammates, a Human Monk nursing an ale with her arm over the shoulder of a red wine drinking Swiftstride Shifter, to speak with them. “Hey guys, I may need a couple of things from a store across on the far side of town. Mind going to grab them whilst I head back to the Hall with Ruby to check on Weiss?”

“No sweat off our back, Jaune,” the feline Fighter replied, “right Yang?”

The monk smiled, “of course. We’ll finish our drinks if that’s alright, then give us a list and we’ll grab ‘em for ya!”

Jaune thanked them not only with words, but also by laying down a gold piece for the barkeep to cover their drinks. Just as the Dwarf and the Aasimar took off for Beacon, Jaune gave the pair a small list of things he would need for this. “It’s usually a fairly simple thing to do - just a Lesser Restoration would remove that poison in no time flat - but this one may need a bit more than just a simple spell or two to help her, if what Ruby said is true.”

“Oh, it was,” Yang reaffirmed, stretching up to ease off some of the pains of the seating in The Spider’s Web, “that thing got a surprise swipe at her to start with that stunned her for like six seconds, then managed to bite at her before she could recover. This is one of the few times where hearing one of Ruby’s stories  _ doesn’t _ actually compare to experiencing the fight itself; it was wild!” 

“Honestly,” Blake added, “if it wasn’t for the fact there were four of us around it and hitting it so much more than it was hitting us, I don’t think things would be looking great for Weiss right now.”

“I can imagine,” Jaune shuddered, “I doubt I’d last a round with a thing like that.” 

“Give yourself some credit, man,” Yang reassured their bearded friend, “it was a tough fight, sure, but you’re made of hardier stuff than you think. Dwarves are naturally tough as is, and you have some of the best healing spells I’ve seen in my life - you’re a tank in your own way, bud.”

With a profound thank you and two finger wave, he took off eastward towards Beacon with Ruby too see how he could ease Weiss' current condition whilst Yang and Blake finished off their drinks with their remaining company, the ever energetic (if sometimes a little shy) Kenku Bard Velvet, who had been taking copious notes on Ruby’s retelling of the story and listened greatly when Yang and Blake filled in the rest, and her gentle Goliath teammate Yatsuhashi, who could drink all of them under the table but often chose not to. 

They eventually wrapped up at the tavern, not wanting to keep her Elfness waiting too long, and began heading south into the main financial district of Vale to go shopping for supplies after they’d finished their drinks. 

“Alright, Miss ‘History Buff’, you know Vale. Where’s the best place in this city to get…” she looked down once more at the note in her hands, “Lavender Roots, a quarter pound jar of sap from the Trees of the Forever Fall, and 20 Gold Pieces worth of ground up Ice Dust?” She scoffed as she slid the shopping list into her pocket for safe keeping. “On a somewhat related note; who needs Dust… dust for this sort of spell? I’ve heard of Diamond Dust for spells, but this is new.”

“From what I know,” Blake offered as she slipped a hand into Yang’s, leading her down the narrow streets of cobblestone, “Jaune needs that Ice Dust to help intensify the Ritual he’s going to perform on Weiss.”

Yang was quite audibly shocked at that revelation. “Ritual?! Uh uh, nope. No way, I am  _ not _ having Mr Small and Beardy make me get components so that he can  _ sacrifice _ my teammate like that. We’re turning back now.”

“I’m telling  _ both of them _ that you said that,” Blake teased as she tugged Yang further along. The Monk’s tanned and freckled skin - still soiled with dirt, grime and a little bit of dried blood from their recent quest - grew redder at the cheeks knowing that her teammate now had  _ another _ piece of leverage over her.

But by the Gods, Blake made it easy to fall for those traps. 

“And it’s not that kind of Ritual anyway Yang. Ritual Spellcasting requires some material components that sometimes are used and sometimes are just there to initiate the ritual, but casting a spell in such a way frees the caster up to use your more immediate spells when the time comes, such as on the battlefield. Plus, in this case, it can amplify the effects of the spell, better purging the poison from the body. I would have thought the Monks would have taught you something like that in your training.” 

“I… I  _ did _ already know that, you know. I just wanted to see if  _ you _ knew what Ritual Spellcasting was,” she fumbled.

“Sounds more like you didn’t want to ruin your reputation over some trivial knowledge, oh great and powerful ‘High Five Fighter’.” 

“Oi! I take offence to that!”

“Sorry; oh great and powerful ‘Flame Slapper’.”

“…I will burn your skin off with a single punch.”

“First, you couldn’t. Second, you wouldn’t if you could,” she teased by sticking her tongue out at her companion. She was right - Yang wouldn’t harm a single fur on her body. “But circling back and answering your question, I believe there is a small district on the far side of Vale that deals primarily in the natural side of things.” 

“That’s Melora’s domain.”

“It is indeed,” she grinned. Blake knew that Yang was studious, and the jab she made at her not seconds before was light-hearted and in no way malicious, but she also knew that sometimes she needed the right motivation to keep things in her mind. Blake was beginning to find… certain ways of encouraging her to study. “We’ll need to make the stop to a store to get that Gem Dust on the way back from the district of The Wildmother.”

“Makes sense,” Yang mentioned as they passed by carts, street sellers and houses, the bustle of Vale’s evening crowd suddenly making the latter half of their journey louder and a little more packed than the first half, but not to the levels of unpleasantness. ”Any amount of Dust is valuable, even in its ground up state. The less time we’re carrying it, the better.”

And so, the duo made their way through the streets striking up casual conversation whenever they deemed it necessary, Blake’s arm looped around Yang’s as they walked.

At one point, Blake’s ear twitched, often signalling to her that there was something nearby. She glanced around, but nothing seemed to be off at all. There were far too many people around here for someone to even dream about attacking her - she was a Guild Member, someone not to be trifled with on the best of days. Even if her past was… clouded.

Eventually, they came across a two storey building with a lovely painted exterior in maroon - a contrast to be sure against the grey and brown of the rest of the street around it, but not to the point of intrusion on the eyeballs.

“This is the one.”

“‘The Crimson Plot’. Sweet name,” Yang acknowledged as they entered the establishment. Inside was vastly different to what the outside would have led you to believe, though the name was kind of a giveaway. There were various different potted plants, hanging plants, sacks of soil; all sorts of botany items she knew Ren would love to come take a look at if he had the time. If he wasn’t training to be a Monk as well as her, Yang reckoned he’d make a pretty awesome Druid. He was definitely an awesome cook and gardener, that much was certain, and in truth, having a friend in the Monastery - even if they were learning different disciplines - was a welcoming and grounding thought.

“Welcome to the Crimson Plot,” a silky smooth feminine voice all but purred from the balcony of the upper floor. The pair glanced up, and there they saw this tall, lithe woman, mid-thirties at latest, in a long flowing dress of silver, mint and green looking down at them with a wave of her hand. They noticed immediately two ears protruding from her head very prominently; Elven ears. An uncommon sight to be sure, seeing a full-blooded Elf alone in a place such as this, seemingly in charge of the establishment. Weiss was no exception to this rule - she did leave her kingdom to come here and pursue a new life, and she was almost always accompanied by at least one of her friends, so she never felt too out of place as this lady appeared. “I am so glad that you stopped by today.”

“Uh, the pleasure is ours,” Yang uncharacteristically stammered out as she felt a wave of something rushing through her head. Blake raised an eyebrow at that response with a smirk towards Yang. Yang only really stammered around her, for obvious reasons. It was quite nice seeing someone else manage to get under her skin for a change. “Our friend has… um… has requested a couple of items from your shop, we wish to… uh, purchase some from yourself. Please. Thank you.” Blake tried really hard not to laugh at that display.

“Just a moment then,” the owner said, floating backwards almost as she made her way to the stairs. 

“I am going to remember that one too,” Blake whispered once the Elf was out of immediate earshot.

“Fuck off, Belladonna,” Yang growled with gritted teeth, face lit up like a volcano. 

“Yang Xiao Long, womaniser and smooth talker, stumped by an Elven lady in a flower shop.”

“I will leave you here and wait outside if I have to.”

Blake’s response was to stick her tongue out at her partner again, then nodded her head around the shop. “Take a wonder inside, please? I’ll deal with this, you just keep your eye out, ‘kay?” She lay a chaste kiss on her cheek and approached the staircase at the far end of the shop to deal with the shopping, leaving Yang to browse.

Something seemed off about this whole ordeal. I mean, Yang was hardly ever put off by someone like this at all. Blake was right, she was a smooth talker - especially with the ladies - and even though she and Blake had started dating, the team often used this tactic to their advantage on a couple of occasions. But this was wrong.

Then there was the scream.

Yang spun around in an instant, and watched with horror as Blake crumpled to the floor with a gasp, her body seizing up with paralysis as the Elf removed a now bloodstained dagger from her side.

“BLAKE!!” she cried out, bounding towards the pair of them.

“Ah ah ah. Any further, and I’ll end your little friend’s life right here and now.” The silky purr had faded away now, clearly a ruse, as instead there was a far more venomous edge to the woman’s words.

“What. Did you. Do?!” Yang demanded, feeling her body shaking with anger.

“Just a little present from her old group, young one. A dagger coated with the concentrated dosage of Death Stalker venom; enough to cause full motor paralysis, but not so potent as to kill her. This one’s former Guild Leader wasn’t too happy about the change in employment, so he wanted her captured so that he could teach her a lesson. It wasn’t too hard to find a beast to send you all out to kill that would really challenge, what with your little heroic streak making you too big for your bridgers.”

“You put out that contract for us to kill that Otyugh?” 

“I did. Knowing that the likelihood of one of you getting poisoned was fairly high, I… appropriated the business that would sell ingredients for a ritualistic cure of the poison off the original owner. Such a nice old man, I hope he didn’t have any family. Should Miss Belladonna here be the victim, then all I simply had to do was bide my time and procure all the necessary ingredients I could until the time was just right. As it wasn’t, I just needed to hope it was her who came to them. And good fortune smiled upon me today. Now, be a good girl,” she purred again as she waved a hand in front of her, “and leave us be.”

Yang  _ knew _ that there was something off, and that just proved it: the woman was a spellcaster! And try as she might, that sensation flooded her mind once again - she felt compelled to do as she said.

But something else filled her mind as she clocked the sight of Blake bleeding out on the floor. Something new, and raw, and  _ hers. _

She felt her blood boil with this anger that she knew she had inside her - Deities knew, she’d had a lot of issues as a kid - and it was calling to her to let it out.

She was debating heeding the call; the Monks had been teaching her to control her impulses and let reason win out over rage.

There was a time for following her Monistic rules and laying out this woman fairly.

This woman offered up a contract to kill on Otyugh, resulting in Weiss getting poisoned.

This woman stabbed Blake and has left her paralysed on the floor in front of her. 

This woman could be the reason that two of her closest friends died today!

There was a time for playing fair, and this wasn’t it.

_ Fuck _ playing fair!

With an almighty roar of anger, the flames from ‘the Fangs of the Fire Snake’ that she had been training in manifested themselves in a flaming aura around Yang, and her eyes began to shine with a crimson fury as she exploded - almost very literally - in a primal Barbarian rage at the sight, and she dashed towards the Elf with a speed she knew she had, ignoring the probing in her mind from the woman in front of her.

Her first impulse was to body check the Elf, knocking both the wind from her lungs, the spell from her mind and the dagger from her hands. All three succeeded as Yang’s shoulder was rammed into her abdomen and her body crashed back against the counter, the dagger flying out behind the wooden divide that would usually separate customer and employee. Ceasing the opportunity, Yang wound up a fist and cracked it against the woman’s well defined features, blood spraying from the punch due to the hefty amount of force behind it.

The Elf managed to react in time before a second fist hit her, raising her leg up to force Yang away from her and unsheathing a second blade from her left side, this a longer dagger that looked far less magical than the first at a glance, considering the plainer and duller hue of the metal and the less convoluted design on it.

“What happens to you next is all your doing, girl,” the faux store clerk promised.

But Yang didn’t care. She roared again as she jumped forward for another punch, landing a strong blow to the Elf’s upper ribs that she was pretty sure cracked one judging by the sound the impact made.

_ Good, _ she thought, a furious grin of sadistic pleasure growing after that hit. 

But then there was a flash of pain in her right shoulder, as in that moment of lapsed judgement the Elven woman took the opportunity to stab the dagger into her arm. 

But Yang felt the fire beneath her skin, felt them burning, and let that fire circulate around her arm a little. She felt the pain, sure. But the pain was numbed, half as deadly as it would have been normally. 

The grin grew as seemingly both Yang and her opponent realised what was happening now.

This game was never in the woman’s favour, and now Yang was  _ even more _ pissed off. 

But Yang’s sense came back to her; this woman needed to be stopped, but just pure brute strength-ing it wasn’t going to send a message. In that moment, she focussed once more on the teachings of her master. She let her training come through once again, and though the rage was still there burning away like a halo of flames, Yang centred herself and let the flames ease a little.

With a jab to the Elven woman’s neck, Yang landed a stunning strike against her. Her opponent could only gasp as her body spasmed involuntarily due to the pressure point she exploited. From there, the Monk threw out a flurry of blows against her opponent that, while calculated, were still probably a bit more brutal than ultimately necessary were she in her right frame of mind. 

By the time Yang was done, the Elf who had tried to kill both her and Blake looked like she had gone a few rounds with a Goliath, and was breathing heavily from the lung that was more likely than not being pressed upon very painfully by a fractured or broken rib or three.

“I want you to remember this,” Yang warned the Elf, who barely managed to raise her head towards Yang in acknowledgement. “I want you to go back to this person who hired you to come here and kill Blake, and tell them that they will not get to her unless they want to go through me!”

There was nothing but a pained and wheezing laugh in response. “You think… that Adam will… stop… because of… you? He… he will find… Blake… and he will bring her… home.”

“Like  _ fuck _ he will!” And with that, she stoked the flames one last time, she let them burn around her as she landed a rage filled Fist of the Fire Snake haymaker straight to her jaw at full force. Her head hit the counter behind with a resounding crunch that was either the counter splintering, her skull fracturing, or both. If she wasn’t dead from that double impact - which Yang wasn’t too sure about to be perfectly honest, judging off sound alone - then she was unquestionably out cold.

The sound was enough to break her out of her rage entirely, but before she focussed on that she needed to focus on her girlfriend. “Blake! Blake, are you okay?”

“I…… I… I c……”

“Okay okay okay okay, easy. Easy,” she reassured her, cradling her as she applied pressure to the bleeding wound on her left hip. It looked bad; the Crimson Plot definitely had an internal spot that matched its namesake now (as morbid as that was to admit.) “Do you think you can move from here? Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

Two blinks.

“Think you can hold out until we get back to the Guild Hall and get you un-paralysed, or should we get a healer here now to patch you up? Blink twice for Guild Hall, three for healer now.”

Two blinks again.

“Sure. Do you want me to message someone to come and help move us?”

One blink.

“Alright. Sit tight baby,” she smiled, tears pooling in her eyes as she reached into one of her pockets and grabbed a small Healing Pot, gently pouring the shimmering red liquid down her partner’s throat, “I’ve got you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RWBY D&D Character traits are based off of Tulok the Barbarian’s “How to Play {Insert Character Here} in Dungeons & Dragons” Series for D&D 5e on YouTube. 
> 
> Fortunately, Ruby, Blake and Yang were already done, making this story much easier for me to complete. 
> 
> Unfortunately, Weiss’, Jaune’s and basically everyone else in the RWBYverse’s were not made, so I had to create that if I wanted to include them. Instead, I took the cheap way out and didn’t include them heavily.
> 
> In this scene, all members of Teams RWBY and JNPR spoken about are at Character Level 6. 
> 
> Yang - 5 Levels of ‘Way of the Four Elements’ Monk, 1 Level of Barbarian  
> Blake - 6 Levels of Echo Knight Fighter  
> Ruby - 6 Levels of Polearm Battle Master Fighter  
> Jaune - 4 Levels of ‘Life Domain’ Cleric, 2 Level of ‘Protection’ Fighter  
> Ren - 6 Levels of ‘Way of the Shadow’ Monk 
> 
> Honestly, this was the prompt that made me want to do Bee-tober, so thank you random word generator for this one!


	7. Overwhelm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a way to wownd up the firwst week with a pwompt for Wednesday: Overwhelm (I'll stop now, I pwomise)
> 
> I liked the idea of exploring The emotional rock of Team RWBY shattering at something simple. So enjoy today's little story

Yang Xiao Long was many things:

She was a fighter; she’d known ever since her early years at Signal getting into more trouble than was worth that she wanted to fight for others. Sometimes physically, but also she just wanted to fight other people’s corners when they couldn’t, because to her everyone deserved to have their say.

She was a tinkerer; Ember Celica were two of her babies, and she remembered every night she spent fixing and improving and working on them. She was low-key proud of her achievement - her shotgun gauntlets were more complicated mechanically as a weapon she made at fourteen than some Junior Huntsmen’s weapons were when they were eighteen. And then there was Bumblebee, her true pride and joy she’d been working on since she was twelve that helped her become so good at tinkering.

She was a friend; if you stuck around, you could see that Yang was always there for you when she could be. You could come talk to her, invite her out, laugh with her, and she would do the same in kind.

She was a sister; the best damn big sister Ruby could ever hope or wish for. And that even spilled out onto the rest of her clique at Beacon - Weiss missed Winter dearly, so she made it her mission to do what she could to praise and offer encouragement as Winter would, albeit with less of the cold aloofness that she was apparently known for, and ignoring the fact that Weiss was in fact two and a half months older than her. When Jaune felt homesick at the start of Beacon, Yang went into ‘Big Sis Mode’ and plaited and braided his hair so ridiculously that it bordered on obscene. But that’s how he felt like at home.

Yang Xiao Long was many things.

One thing she tried to prove she was  _ not _ was that she was not like her mother.

Not Summer. No, she knew from the moment she could comprehend that she was not going to be like Summer Rose, because no one else could ever  _ be _ like Summer Rose ever again. It would be like trying to capture lightning in a bottle; an experience never to be replicated in their lifetimes at all. (And no, putting Lightning Dust in a bottle did not count in this metaphor. It meant actual bolts from the sky.)

No, Yang was referring to Raven Branwen, her biological mother.

She had a funny way of showing she cared. The moment things started getting too much, Raven would disappear from their lives until she was “ready” to come back in, so her Dad used to say, heart clearly heavy from the constant absence of his teammate-turned-lover in hardships.

Which is why Yang was cursing every God she cared to recall as she stood out on her family’s cabin balcony on a late July evening, tears streaming down her face in a rage she undeniably knew was aimed at her Branwen heritage.

“Yang?”

Yang jumped at the sudden voice from behind her, but eased a little when she saw that it was just her girlfriend. “Oh, hey Blake.” She turned around again to look outwards, not too eager to show this side of herself.

“What’re you doing up here Yang?”

“I just… needed a little ‘me time’, y’know?” 

“Everyone’s worried about you,” the Faunus mentioned, coming up behind Yang to wrap her arms around her midsection in a loving hug. “You upped and disappeared all of a sudden, and your dad looked really crestfallen at the fact you did.”

That admission brought about a shuddering sob from Yang, who allowed Blake to take her weight as she turned around and crumbled into her girlfriend’s embrace.

“It’s alright, Baby,” she whispered soothingly, using Blake Belladonna and Girlfriend privileges to gently stroke Yang’s hair to calm her. “I’m here for you. We all are.”

They spent a good minute just existing there together, the warm oranges and reds of the setting sun in the Patch sky transitioning into the deep blues and purples of nighttime.

“I don’t deserve you,” Yang eventually admitted.

“Yang…”

“I don’t,” she reiterated. “You all came here for my birthday, showed me love and affection, and I just got so… so overwhelmed that I ended up pulling a Mom and disappearing when it got too much for me.” The tears started coming back, but Blake pushed Yang away from her just enough to rest their foreheads together.

“Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“You are not Raven Branwen.”

“I’m her kid though, Blake.”

“Yes you are. You are the child of a woman who ran away from what should have been the best thing in her life because she got overwhelmed by the responsibility of raising a child. You are the child of Raven Branwen, but you are the  _ daughter _ of Summer Rose and Taiyang Xiao Long-”

“Gods, it feels weird to hear you say my Dad’s name in full.”

“It  _ felt _ weird to say your Dad’s name in full,” Blake admitted with a chuckle, one Yang joined in with. “You are their daughter. Yes, I can see you got a little overwhelmed earlier. But do you know why?” Yang shook her head. “Because you are selfless, and you are human. Because you so often put the needs of others ahead of yourself, and work on making things better and inclusive for everyone else, that when the roles are reversed like they were today, it took you by surprise.” A small smile graced Blake’s features as she looked Yang directly in the eyes. “Am I wrong?”

“...no.” 

“Exactly. It’s not bad that things got a bit much for you, but unlike Raven, do you know what you’re going to do?” Yang shrugged innocently enough, but the smile that started growing on her face gave her away. “You’re going to come with me-”

“Blake, we’re at home for my birthday, now is not the time for  _ that. _ ”

“You dork!” the Faunus laughed, playfully smacking her girlfriend on the shoulder. “No, we’re going to go back downstairs, and we’re going to be there with your friends, and even though you got a little bit overwhelmed to start with, you are ready to have fun and be with them on your special day.”

Yang smiled brighter hearing Blake say that. “What did I do to deserve you?”

“You were very loud on initiation, and you caught my attention.” 

“Rude.” Blake just stuck her tongue out.

Yang Xiao Long was many things.

And getting better was one of them.


	8. Flush

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Eight: Flush.
> 
> And no, it's not a Poker story - I don't know jack all about Poker. I know jack all about what I actually wrote about, but at least I could make this one slightly more interesting.

Neither Blake nor Yang could really be described as “Plant People”.

Yang’s escape hobby was centred on the mechanical side of things. Whenever she needed to keep her mind occupied, she would head to the garage out back when she was at home in Patch, or she would head to the workshop at Beacon when she had the spare time, and she would create and tinker to her heart’s content.

There was something about working with mechanics and metal that she found very soothing and freeing, if not also taxing work. To Yang, it didn’t matter if what she was making had any sort of practical value or was made for the sake of occupying her time and thoughts, sometimes she just needed to do a bit of wiring and welding to make something inconsequential, because knowing that it was her skill and know-how that created this thing made her smile. 

For Blake, it had always been reading. Fiction especially. The author’s ability to take all the words they know and arrange them in whichever order they desire to create prose that captured the hearts of thousands of others like her. To hear their stories of superheroes and villains, stories of cowgirls and city folk, of simple people in simpler times, of grandiose adventures, of love and loss and pain and anguish and guilt and joy. Oh she loved it all.

It was honestly how she believes she stayed in the White Fang for so long. The way she and the others behaved, it would have driven her away years ago. But she had her escape; for better or worse. Books gave her an out from the harsh reality she was in and let her live out her life in the world of the characters in the story. And while she no longer feels the same way about her stories, that they were an escape from the harshness of the life she lived, she still held that the escapism novels provided was what she needed every now and again.

Both girls had their escapes; one in tinkering, the other in reading.

Which is why it confused them both when they decided to start taking care of plants in their house.. 

“When exactly did this happen?” Yang asked Blake as she took a pencil and stuck it through the hole at the bottom of the pot she was holding.

Blake, filling up a measuring jug while also looking back and forth between her Scroll and the jug, offered a simple shrug as a response. “This feels so… not us, if you get me.”

“Oh totally.” Yang poked another hole in the bottom of the soil with the blunt end of the pencil, cursing lightly as some spilt out onto their hardwood floor. “I would be down at the workshop right now a year ago. And you, you’d be nose deep in one of your shameless porn books.”

“They are  _ romance novels, _ and they have a plot!” she defended. “They’re not just some lewd fantasy of the author, they are a full story that just so happen to include some explicit scenes.”

“Uh huh,” Yang offered up unconvinced, “and you’re overflowing the jug.” Blake’s cursing was far more colourful than Yang’s was - helped in no small part to the Faunus language she threw in every so often that honestly made Yang smile hearing come from her partner’s mouth, even if the words were vulgar. “But I get you. Flushing out our plants so that they grow better next year? That is not something I ever expected to hear come out of my mouth in a serious manner.” 

Blake just nodded. “Alright, the jug’s field up as much as is needed. Now what’s it say?”

“It says we should gently pour the water onto the plant and let it drain through entirely. They recommend doing it somewhere where leaking won’t matter.”

“Bathtub?”

“Bathtub.”

The couple moved themselves from their kitchen so that they could continue with this somewhere more suitable. It was odd at first, but over time they grew to enjoy this just as much as they did their own individual hobbies. It became  _ their _ hobby. And getting to share one more thing with the woman that they loved was never a bad thing in their books.


	9. Breast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Breast.  
> Hmm...
> 
> Seeing as I had quite an experience the day before I wrote this one, I decided to base this one off of real life, so you get a glimpse on Day 9 of Bee-tober of how terrible of a cook I am.

Blake tried, she really did.

Anyone who knew her knew that making an effort was one of Blake’s ways of showing her care and affection, just as it was a great way to show your love and affection to Blake by doing the same.

With Weiss in her first year of training at Beacon Academy, she was very blunt with the girl when it came to Faunus political matters, to the point that she up and ran away when she accidentally exposed herself as a Faunus to her teammates. But when the three of them found her and Sun at the docks a couple of evenings later, Weiss apologised for her behaviour. And that was something Blake appreciated immensely. From that moment on, both her and Weiss had more of an understanding of one another, and they often had discussions about their respective roles in the world they were now a part of. They each made an effort to better know one another, and it grew into a friendship that - in Weiss’ own words - was more of a family than it was a friendship.

But sometimes, Blake liked to do more to show how much she cared.

And right now, that backfired.

“Woah woah Blake, Blake! It’s okay, you’re alright.”

_ {“But I can’t Yang,”} _ , the Faunus cried over her Scroll,  _ {“how can I be so bad at this?!”} _

“It’s okay, baby. It’s alright. Where are you? Are you at home?” All Yang got was a watery “uh huh” down the line. “Okay, head to the sofa, take it easy, I’ll be there as quick as I can. Is there anything on at the moment, any gas?”

_ {“No, it’s all off.”} _

“Alright, then just stay on the sofa until I get there. I love you.” Yang got a disheartened hum of acknowledgement in return as the line went silent.

~~~~~~~~~~

Yang got home to an eerily quiet house. She had to walk past the kitchen before getting to the sofa she told Blake to lay on while she got there, and at once she could see the problem. There was a whole array of ingredients and utensils, some in decently cut heaps, others in a discarded mess that could be mistaken for a pile if you squint hard enough.

Now the tearful call made sense.

“You doing okay in there, sweetie?” Yang asked as she slowly made her way to the living room. Her partner shot up like a rocket on hearing her voice, and Yang’s heart ached at the sight - Blake’s golden amber eyes were red from crying, her hair was a mess from where she had clearly been pulling it in frustration at herself. “Oh, Blake…”

“I’m sorry,” the Faunus sniffled, fresh tears pooling almost instantaneously in the corners of her eyes. “I just wanted to do something for you tonight, but now I’m here like this, and you-”

“And nothing, Blake,” Yang interrupted, smiling softly and walking around to sit with Blake on the sofa, arm draped over her shoulder comfortingly. “I see what you were trying to do. It’s sweet, really. And I appreciate you trying to do something out of your comfort zone to be nice.  _ But, _ you ran before you could walk-” Blake let out a moan of embarrassment as Yang told her that, “-and this is what became of it. So instead of throwing away everything to cheap out on doing this, how do you fancy being my sous chef for the evening? You’re not doing all the work, but you’re helping me out. Sound like a compromise you’re up for?”

“...yeah.” 

Satisfied with the answer she got, in Blake’s own time, she and Yang went back to the kitchen to pick up where Blake’s emotions left her.

“‘Herby Chicken Breast’, not a bad choice, Belladonna. Kinda complicated to be doing on your own for a first timer though.”

“I’m sor-”

“Nope!” Yang butted in, popping her ‘p’. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You underestimated the task before you, and now you have help.”

“It said ‘40 minutes’, but I had been with it for nearly an hour, and I was only on step one.” Yang smiled softly; she knew Blake meant well, but those timings for creating the meal were more likely achieved by asking two professional chefs to give their A-Game while making this in less time than necessary yet achieving higher results.

“Well fuck the timings, we’re going for the end result over anything else. Speaking of step one, do you want to get those potatoes chopped, or do you want to do the herb mayo?”

The pair spent the next hour and a bit going through each step slowly and calmly, never rushing any step they were given. Despite Yang being the main cook for this, she didn’t hog all of the responsibility for the meal prep, instead sharing it with Blake. At the end, they were left with a beautifully prepared dinner of mashed potato with caramelised onion, herbed breadcrumb chicken breast and a side of garlicky green beans. 

“Wow, that was a fantastic meal,” Yang acknowledged as she reclined back on her chair, stuffed after finishing her plate, “thank you so much Blake.”

“I can’t take credit for doing th-” Yang’s raised eyebrow look of ‘really?’ stopped that train of thought. “Uh, I mean… no problem.” That changed Yang’s tune, as her expression changed to that of a smile. “I think, in the future though, we may need to do everything together to prevent the first part of the evening reoccurring.”

“I won’t say no to that.”


	10. Seal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're one third of the way through this crazy month, so let's see what Day 10 - Seal - has in store for us, shall we?

_ Dear Raven, _

_ I hope all is well. _

_ I know it has been some time since last we interacted, but I wanted you to know that I- _

“Grr, no. Too formal.” She crossed it out and started again.

_ Mom, _

_ Hope you’re good. _

_ When we last spoke I never got to tell you th- _

“Argh, NO!” Yang shouted in frustration, her semblance flaring just enough to spark and ignite the piece of paper on fire, letting it burn in her grip, discarding the blackened remains of her scribblings onto the floor.

How could something so simple be so damned difficult to put down in words?

Yang lay her head on the table in annoyance; this wasn’t going to work. The idea was decent enough in theory, but that was exactly all it was - theory. This could never realistically be done and yield results.

“What am I doing wrong?” she muttered to herself, staring at the fresh paper in front of her.

“Maybe you’re thinking too much about it.” 

The sound Yang made was easily the least Yang-like noise Blake had ever heard come from her partner’s mouth as she spun around in terror at the sudden intrusion into her room.

“Brothers, Blake.  _ Must _ you be a ninja 24/7; I nearly died from the shock!”

“You wouldn’t have,” Blake commented nonchalantly, taking a seat on Yang’s lap and placing a kiss on the corner of her mouth, “I’ve seen you punch Beringels in the face before. Nothing like what I did could scare you. But out of curiosity, what are you trying to do?”

“I want to write a letter to my Mom.”

“...okay, I take it back. That’s pretty scary.”

This was one of the many reasons Yang was in love with Blake; her ability to match and compliment her weird (and wonderful - if she did say so herself) sense of humour. Yang had spoken to Blake about Raven on more than one occasion - she was one of potentially only four people on Remnant who knew of Raven’s status as the Spring Maiden before that tidbit of information was revealed to the rest of their travelling group. Yang trusted Blake enough to let her in on a piece of information that could be pivotal to the fate of the entire world, yet was chosen to be kept a secret.

But Blake had also been told about what Yang had done when she was younger searching for her mother. About how she almost got Ruby and herself killed if it wasn’t for her Uncle Qrow coming along to save her at the last minute.

To Yang, Raven Branwen was without question the second scariest thing that she could encounter in her lifetime. Salem was an easy first place winner, but if anyone saw that and knew what they knew about her, they would free up their number one slot without question.

“Why are you trying to write to her?” Blake inquired. “I thought we wouldn’t have to deal with her again. You know, as we already have the Relic from the Spring Vault.”

“We don’t,” Yang admitted. “This one is… purely personal.” She sighed, shifting Blake a little so she could stand and walk over to the window of their shared room. “I want to just leave her be, to never have to interact with her again. But at the same time, I want to make an effort. What if we don’t win this Blake? What if Salem genuinely can’t be beaten, and all this is for nought? No, I want to be the bigger person in this relationship.”

Blake approached Yang, gently threading her fingers between the metal digits of Yang’s prosthetic, the couple staring out at the landscape before them - they were taking refuge in a cold settlement just outside of Mantle’s borders equally as forgotten by Atlas as Mantle itself; perfect for their hideout for the time being.

“If the world ends tomorrow, I want it known that I at least made an effort to try and reconnect with my Mom. That I was the bigger person and reached out to her because it was something that I wanted to do, rather than out of a necessity like last time, or out of some twisted code she wished to live by when she came to save me. Raven is my Mom, and I want the end to come about amicably, if that is what she chooses.” 

“It’s a very brave choice, Yang.”

“I don’t want this to be nebulous either. I want to tell her how I feel, and what I want to come of her reading this letter. The choice is then up to her.”

“Alright, then let’s get started writing, shall we?” she said, pulling Yang over to the desk once more.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Raven?” Tai called out. The dark haired woman stood out in the front garden of Tai’s abode back on Patch, staring up at the sky. The only indication she had heard him was a slight turn of her head. “You got a letter. Guess they got lucky in guessing where you were going to be.” With that, he left said letter on the table out front and headed back into the house.

Raven was not one for receiving letters. But when she looked down and saw the wax seal on the back with a distinct burning heart emblem on the back, she knew who had sent it.

Tempting though it may be to call upon her Maiden powers to burn the letter in her hand, or have bolts of electricity tear it apart piece by piece, curiosity got the better of her; she couldn’t exactly get rid of her daughter’s letter just like that. She broke the seal without much care for preserving it, then read the letter penned inside.

_ Raven, _

_ I hope this letter finds you well. I wasn’t sure exactly where to send it, so hopefully this reaches you in time. _

_ I wanted to apologise for what was said last time we spoke, but by now enough time has passed that doing so feels cheap for the pair of us.  _

_ Instead, I want to make amends.  _

_ Should our task prove not to be fruitless and our mission successful, I want us to meet up and talk. Just talk. We’ve never really done that in nearly twenty years. It was confrontational last time, and business the time before that. I want to know so many things, things that Dad or Uncle Qrow never told me and Ruby about you. I want to try. _

_ And so, this is me trying. _

_ If I get the chance, I will send another letter back to Dad’s house again to let you know that we’re on our way home. I want you to be there at some point. Not immediately, but soon. _

_ There would be no need for harsh words about Ozpin and magic and Salem - if all goes well, that will be a thing of the past. _

_ I can’t forgive you for what you did to me and Dad. I don’t think I could begin to. But maybe I could get to know Raven at some point, even if I never get to see my Mom again. _

_ Yang Xiao Long _

Tai didn’t like listening in on other people’s conversations, and reading a letter wasn’t exactly like listening in to someone communicating via Scroll. But hearing Raven fail to suppress a small shaky breath after reading that letter meant he knew whatever his daughter had said to her had hit her. And he couldn’t be prouder of his Sunny Little Dragon for doing that.


	11. Attention

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hehehe.... Day 11... Attention.......

Yang sat at her writing desk, minding her own business on a grey, but thankfully still dry, Saturday afternoon. 

She'd done all her work for the month, so she could sit back and relax.

Until she got a message come through from Blake.

_**Belladonna, B**   
_ _Hey babe, managed to finish today's chapter?_

**_Xiao Long, Y  
_ ** _sure did!!! its ez uploading what u workd on in advance_

**_Belladonna,_ _B  
_ ** _Well, I can't wait to see what you did for this one. "Attention" wasn't too difficult for me, so I imagine it would be just as easy for you._

Yang blanched on reading that message.

She read it again. And again to make sure her eyes weren't playing tricks.

**_Xiao Long, Y  
_ ** _wat was the prompt?_

**_Belladonna, B  
_ ** _It was on our list Yang._

_The word was Attention._

_...You missed the prompt, didn't you?_

**_Xiao Long, Y  
_ ** _I MISSED IT!!!!_

_HOW COULD I MISS IT???_

_:O_

_T_T_

_HELP ME!!_

**_Belladonna, B_ ** _  
_ _I guess you should have paid more attention to the prompt lists, should you Yang?_

**_Xiao Long, Y_ ** _  
_ _NOOOOOOOO!!!! :((((_

And so it was that Yang threw together something completely haphazard at the last minute, because she did indeed miss the day's prompt. 

But fortunately, it didn't really matter what she turned in, just so long as she turned in _something,_ so she created a short story about a boy who had the exact same scenario as she was.

That'd do the trick, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I somehow completely missed this prompt MULTIPLE TIMES ON READING THE PROMPT LIST, and so in the thirty six minutes since I'd seen Defence's chapter uploaded, saw the title and went, "Oh MONKEY FEATHERS, I've missed a day!!", I threw this together. 
> 
> Sorry to all y'all reading this and wanting a more substantial and well thought out chapter; this ain't the day for that, because I am a dunce!


	12. Rebel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had definitely already prepared this one before the upload day!  
> Let's go to one of my favourite AU types, and let's make Day 12's word - Rebel - a Star Wars AU

She was a Padawan when she first saw her, when she had no idea what the Force had in store for her future.

The girl with the magnetic pull to her, eyes the colour of the Yellow Moon of Galaan, hair as dark as the night but equally as intriguing. 

Yang didn’t know what drew her to this girl, but the moment she felt her presence, she could not take her eyes off of her until the crowded streets of Coruscant broke her eyeline and she was gone.

~~~~~~~~~~

_ She was just a normal girl when she first saw her, when the world was mere moments from turning upside down in front of her. _

_ The young Jedi learner with golden hair fancier than the phillargry in her parent’s place in the city, eyes almost like the captured purple passion flowers she saw decorating her home when her father was feeling romantic and brought home a bouquet for her mother. _

_ Blake saw this young girl and felt something she never knew she could feel - a connection unknown yet so right. But when she and her parents were forced down that dark alleyway, the girls’ sight breaking, she was forced to break that tether that brought them together. _

~~~~~~~~~~

She was a General the first time they fought; when she was sure this was not the first time they’d met.

The armies of the Republic were battling against a vicious sect of the criminal mafia organisation known as The White Fang Syndicate that were attacking civilians, and Yang had been instructed to lead the 1901 Division of Clones in a peacekeeping effort. She fought her way through the ranks until they met in a foyer of one of the Senators they were attacking.

Yang’s training in Form VII under Master Windu himself ensured her strikes were unpredictable yet powerful, where the enjoyment of the fight and the thrill of winning aided in her advances, even though she was told it drew on the power of the Dark Side, causing her piercing violet eyes to shift to Mustafarran red. 

But this opponent countered her every move with ease, as if the two were in a dance where neither lead yet neither followed. They struck, parried, deflected, flourished, all in sync, her fiery yellow lightsaber blade clashing with the weapons of choice of her opponent.

It was not her mission to do so, and not exactly the Jedi way to enjoy such revelries, but the battle ended as Yang knew any good dance should, in mutual respect. She nodded knowingly, then walked back to her troops without so much as a second glance.

~~~~~~~~~~

_ She was an Officer when they met again, fate playing a cruel trick on her. _

_ Her Task Force were given simple instructions by Adam: cause chaos and create a distraction. He was running his part of the mission alone - a fact Blake never agreed on but he did anyway. She wanted them to cause a ruckus, some notable damage to draw the attention of everyone. She didn’t want blood on her hands, unlike some. _

_ And when the Jedi arrived, her hair glowing a brilliant gold, her lightsaber igniting with a hue that made it look like it stole the light from her head and let it sit in her hands, she was thankful that she wore a mask to obscure her face. _

_ Every strike she tried to make against the Jedi was matched with another, and Blake was glad that she had trained to wield her two blades of Mandalorian Iron to counter the intensity of the Jedi’s blade. And yet, Blake never made any moves. At least, not consciously. She felt like the universe made the decisions for her, moving her body in ways she herself would never make under normal circumstances. _

_ When their fight ended with no victor, Blake was surprised that the Jedi just walked away with a knowing bow of the head. There’s no way she could have known. _

_ Could she? _

~~~~~~~~~~

She was an outcast the third time they met, and the first time she knew this was not a coincidence.

The allegiance of the Armies of the Republic changed on a dime. No one survived, at least to her knowledge. All of the Jedi she had known and grown up with, killed by the very soldiers they fought alongside not even a couple of days- a couple of  _ minutes _ before. 

Yang never truly liked the idea of being a General, especially at such a young age. She hated the idea of being on the run more, but needs must. She wanted to sneak aboard a cargo vessel, make a couple of changeovers on various ships heading towards the outer planets and live a life away from it all, yet the Force had other ideas when it convinced her to stay on Kuat just a little while longer.

She spotted the woman a couple of hours after her ride had taken off and left her on the Industrial planet a little while longer; hair unmistakably obsidian black, eyes undeniably hauntingly amber, that draw together unquestionably deliberate, and those blades - the same ones she clashed against those years ago. It was her back then. The Force  _ wanted _ them together.

Yang went to approach, but halted her advance at the sight of other members of the White Fang Syndicate appearing out of the woodwork nearby. She trusted this woman, she trusted in the Force; she would not trust them with a single spec of her being.

The man at the front - her leader, assuming by her sudden posture change - looked to be talking to- no,  _ at _ her. There was darkness surrounding this man. No Sith, that much Yang was grateful for, but there still emanated a noticeable evil from his being.

The group left, leaving the mystery girl behind. Yang took the opportunity - this was not a safe space for them. She approached inconspicuously (a tough feat when she had eyes trained on her all the time), and spoke cryptically as she passed.

“Trust, and follow when ready.”

~~~~~~~~~~

_ She was conflicted the next time they met, fighting between her feelings and her beliefs. _

_ Adam had selected her and a few others as his elites to follow rumours of a Jedi sighting around the Kuat shipyards. The bounty for bringing in someone like that would see them with a few million credits each to the right bidder - who wouldn’t want to lorde it over all that they had captured one of the last Jedi in the galaxy. _

_ And yet Blake almost recoiled at the flash of hair that shone through under the tattered cloak of her target. A calm washed over her that prevented her doing so, but to know that their target was  _ **_her_ ** _ \- of all the Jedi on all the worlds, and of all the survivors, it had to be  _ **_her._ **

_ Curiosity almost got them both killed as Adam caught her standing around. He grilled her for information; what had she seen, is there any further description of their target, any sightings recently. They weren’t questions asked to her, they were reasons he saw her as a weak link framed as questions. They were blaster bolts against a reflector shield, hoping that one of his words will break her. _

_ The irritated huff of disappointment (both in her as a person and in the lack of anything useful from her) as he walked away brought a smirk to her face. Despite that, she felt panic set it. She wanted to remain on Adam’s better side despite not liking him purely because it would make her life easier in the long run. _

_ But this woman caught her in a web- _

_ “Trust, and follow when ready.” _

_ -and those words just pulled her in closer. _

~~~~~~~~~~

She was a guide the fourth time they met, on a journey neither led yet both followed.

Yang saw the ship enter the atmosphere, and she stood waiting patiently nearby. The Force told her to make the trip to Ilum once more in a vision. It told her that the paths selected for them will in time become the paths chosen, and that this was the true test of their faith in listening to the call of the Force together.

She had prepared for this arrival, and said very little conversationally as they made their way through the trials of the crystal.

By the end, this woman showed understanding of what was happening, and followed the call of her kyber crystal. It was special at a glance - twice the length of any crystal Yang had seen when passing by other Jedi and Masters reassembling their weapons with the Force, but not sitting right in the exiled Jedi’s eyes.

“The crystal calls to you; it is now yours, just as you are now its,” Yand recited [read: ad-libbed masterfully], “as you had listened to it call you here, you now must make it listen to you. Your weapon must reflect you.”

Yang merely observed as the weapons grew from what had been to what now was. It made sense from what she knew of her.

“The choices we make are often the will of the Force if the action is too great to ignore. I cannot train you, not like this, not as we are. Understand yourself, and as it has done, the Force will bring us back together again.”

~~~~~~~~~~

_ She was lost when she first landed on Ilum. She was without purpose. _

_ Yet she came with a goal. _

_ Blake was a liar for leaving as and when she did. The Syndicate would know eventually, and with Adam at the helm there was very little ground to stand on comfortably if you crossed him. She needed protection from him; the man who graciously took her in despite orchestrating the hit that killed her parents that night on Coruscant. _

_ She barely flinched when a mass of golden blonde hair greeted her on arrival. Without many words, the pair walked onwards, the ex-Jedi leading Blake as if she already knew what was happening. Not a surprise in the grand scheme of things - everything always just seemed to click with her. _

_ The crystal caves truly were a sight to behold. Even as they were, stripped of their treasure through the constant arrival of younglings to find the gem that ‘called to them’, as the stories told. _

_ A tall tale, if not for the singing that drew Blake closer and closer to its source. Seeing the shining stone embedded in the ice as the voice of this song changed her tune of that aspect. _

_ The golden Jedi told her to make her weapon her own, and she knew exactly why she had been drawn to the double sized crystal. With a snap, it split in two, and her blades were outfitted with the heart of a Jedi…  _

_ Wait, did that mean that  _ **_she_ ** _ was a Jedi now?! _

~~~~~~~~~~

She was an ally the fifth time they met, fighting for their lives against odds that seemed too high to beat.

The White Fang Syndicate’s leader really had a thing for her. It was a personal vendetta at this point.

He got lucky, but so caught up in his plot he missed the goal. Her right arm was now entirely robotic, as he deemed it appropriate to dismember his captured prey to set an example and make for better game to hunt - a term she’d heard used when talking about Swamp Rats, not people - but it backfired when there were people willing to fight her corner.

But now she was in a similar situation; his blade of  _ Dathobeskar _ \- Mandalorian iron stained red like the blood red soil of Dathomir - poised to take more than her arm this time. If not for the clash of two violet beams of kyber energy against his blade, Yang would be dead.

The Force was strong with them today. Much like their first fight against each other, when together they danced with Adam. One move was perfectly complemented with another from the other, with need for words. They just knew, golden and violet dancing like it was the plan all along.

It was not the Jedi way - even if that way was a forgotten relic of a bygone era now - to end a life as they did. But hearing the relief escape her companion’s mouth in what sounded like the first breath of freedom she’d had in years justified the action.

~~~~~~~~~~

_ She made her choice when next they met. _

_ She had stood by and watched as innocents got hurt. As she watched Adam lose all sense of what little sanity he had tracking down this golden Jedi. As he severed her arm for the sheer joy of it all. _

_ She could not stand aside and watch as this woman - someone who saw Blake as a person lost in amongst the galaxy - reached out for her and made her feel more welcomed here than anywhere else. _

_ Blake ignited her blades and intercepted his sword mid swing, the striking purple hue of her twin lightsabers saving the Jedi’s life from that fatal blow. The shock on Adam’s face alone was worth it, seeing him try to comprehend what led her to rebel against him after seventeen long years.  _

_ Fighting alongside the Jedi who had captured her mind’s eye with such a level of synchronicity that only years of training could fully explain in mere moments was a feeling she had never experienced before. _

_ Adam left her no choice but to kill him. With how far he had gone, leaving him alive would have meant that sooner or later the Empire would have been informed and they would have been hunted down by them and the White Fang Syndicate. With him gone, with the man who all but killed her parents out of her life forever now, she could breathe. She could be herself. _

_...she would be on the run, alone. _

_ No… not alone. _


	13. Spider

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 13, and we have Spider.
> 
> Nought much more to say; enjoy!

Blake was usually very good at keeping herself to herself. 

She made it quite clear near the start of the year to people who needed to be told that she was not one to be messed around with. She applied herself when she was required to, but stayed out of the way the rest of the time.

She could take a lot of punishment in regards to things like name calling - years spent in the White Fang meant she was subject to plenty of derogatory terms thrown her way. It was the whole reason she chose to wear the bow throughout her time at Beacon, it gave her an escape from the attacks at her for being a Faunus. 

“Urgh, why are you even here?”

“Ozpin shouldn’t have accepted your submission, Belladonna.”

“Such a waste of space.”

…but this was a cruelty even she was not truly accustomed to - entitled teenage douchebag-ery from her peers - and eventually even the mightiest of walls will crumble under the pressure.

Yang was on dorm cleaning duty that day when a teary eyed Blake came charging in and slammed their door, throwing herself onto the bed.

“Whoa, what happened Blake?” Yang asked, the maternal instinct she had shown to Ruby as a kid that she was toning down now that they were both in Beacon and Ruby was maturing beyond the need for it coming back in full swing. The suddenness of Yang’s voice caused Blake to recoil in fright at it, a sight that broke Yang’s heart to cause such a raw reaction from her partner. “Easy! Easy Blake, stay calm. It’s just me, your friendly neighbourhood Yang.”

Coming back from the adrenaline rush of fear, Blake was eventually consolable enough to answer. “Sorry, I thought you were elsewhere. I’ll go somewhere else if you-”

“Nope. Sit your butt back on the bed.” Blake did as such, wiping tears from her eyes. “Now, did anything happen to your ears?”

“No, this… this wasn’t to do with that.” To date, nearly five months into their time at Beacon, there had been only once incident to do with her Faunus heritage. And in all honesty, that one was self-inflicted. “This was… something else.”

“Cool. Do you want to talk now, or in a bit? ‘Cause I still got cleaning to do else Weiss is going to have my head. Seriously, can you believe she deligated her cleaning duty to me? Just because it’s her birthday this week she thi- oh, is it because you haven’t got her a present yet?”

Yang was definitely Ruby’s sister; the way the pair of them could ramble on sometimes about nothing was endearing and sort of homely to the Faunus. With a polite chuckle, Blake informed Yang, “no, it’s not that either. Though I do need to go and get something later today or tomorrow for her.”

“So, can I ask what it was that made you come running in here crying? Because it’s kind of worrying seeing your best friend in a state all of a sudden.”

“…a few of the other students have been saying that I shouldn’t be here. Because I keep to myself and don’t act like they do, I’m ‘not right for this school’ or whatever.” She glanced up at her partner. “Don’t do anything to them, I don’t listen to them but, I guess today they said it one too many times and something broke through.”

Yang was debating not doing anything. She was also really debating doing out and finding whoever it was who said this to Blake and letting them experience firsthand why Blake Belladonna  _ should _ be here.

But then she glanced down and saw the duster she still held in her hand.

“You’re like a spider.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah, you’re like a spider,” the blonde repeated with a smile.

Blake looked at her friend like she had grown a second head. “Okay, how does that have anything to do with what we were talking about?”

“Spiders are necessary. You might not appear to be at first glance, you’re kind of just there out of the way. And there are those that think spiders are nothing but pests. But if you think about it, without spiders, there’s a lot of crap that moves around and thinks that they own the place. Spiders work from the shadows, and help make the place better.”

“That’s… actually a very sweet way of putting it,” Blake admitted, the faintest hints of a blush on her features. “And also,” she added, “there are some spiders back home in Menagerie that are the size of dinner plates, and that could cause immense pain if you cross them, causing the victim to hack off their own body parts to save themselves from the pain of living with the pain of the bite.”

For a decently tanned girl, Blake never thought she would see Yang Xiao Long blanche so instantaneously and fully. She almost rivalled Weiss by how pale she got.

“Please tell me you aren’t being serious. I couldn’t deal with that at all. Basic household spiders I can just about manage, but that?” she shuddered at the prospect.

Blake said nothing. She just filed that nugget of information under ‘useful information to friendly blackmail my teammates with’ for later. “Even if I was lying, I really do appreciate the sentiment Yang.”

The blonde smiled at her partner. “Anytime.” And she truly meant that.


	14. Tongue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tongue, Day 14, let's go!

Blake notices it, but chose not to say. 

I mean, it wasn’t as if it was relationship breaking, it was simply an observation she made: Yang blepped.

Well, the technical term was ‘Yang stuck her tongue out just a little when she concentrated’, but the word blep said all of that without the hassle.

It was mostly when dealing with fiddly or intricately detailed work, but when her girlfriend was in that zone of focussing squarely on the task at hand, her tongue would poke out of the corner of her mouth.

There was no benefit in telling Yang this - she would only become self-conscious of the fact she did it and would then shy away from doing those tasks to avoid embarrassment. And if Blake was being totally honest, she was nowhere near the level of engineering prowess Yang was, and things broke around here far more often than either would openly like to admit. 

Gambol Shroud was a fairly standard VBCS weapon, capable of multiple forms which was impressive on a surface level, but ultimately had very little technical input from Blake herself when construction came into play. The only real input she had was asking Pietro to embellish some golden alloy into the blade when it was broken.

Ember Celica, on the other hand, was in a league above her own. Yang custom created everything about her gauntlets, from the collapsable design to the placement of all the springs and coils inside to maximise the potential of recoil from the shotgun blasts. And when she began using her prosthetic, it was standard issue Atlas tech. Yang made the initial upgrades to the arm so that she had another shotgun to balance herself out again. Yang assisted with the secondary upgrades with Pietro in Mantle, wanting everything created perfectly for her. Yang had a calling as an engineer should the Huntress’ life ever grow dull.

And seeing those little bleps when she was focussed made Blake realise how lucky she was to share a life with this woman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 1...


	15. Domestic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...of 2!  
> Day 15, and we get Domestic. And as mentioned, a follow up chapter to the previous day's work

Yang notices it, but chose not to say.

I mean, it wasn’t as if it was relationship breaking. Far from it actually, which was one of the reasons Yang was convinced their love was destined to be.

Blake made herself a tea every single morning, without fail. She wasn’t a coffee drinker like Yang was, has gone on record saying she hates the stuff, and was cursing the crash she got after she had some one time for weeks afterwards. 

But even though Blake despised the “granulated jitter sludge” Yang drank, without fail there would be a steaming cup of it sitting and waiting with a splash of cream and a single sugar in Yang’s favourite, important company present only mug every morning. 

(The one Yang used when they had ‘unimportant company’ - aka, anyone that wasn’t Weiss, Ruby, Jaune, Ren or Nora - present was a normal sized cup sporting a simple blue design. But her true favourite one was the oversized mug she was given as a gift one Non Descript Winter Holiday that had “You think my boobs are big? Check out this T Cup!” on its side)

It would be normal for any couple to do that, knowing their drink preference and preparing it for them in the morning if they’re the first up. There was something kind of domestic about that act.

But it clicked for Yang not a couple of minutes ago; Blake had been doing that since Beacon.

This wasn’t something she’d started doing since they’d moved in together, this had been part of their routine every day they were together for seven and a bit of the last eight years of their life.

And knowing that this little act of love and kindness was something that just happened one day and was never questioned made Yang realise how lucky she was to share a life with this woman.


	16. Freedom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bring on the Freedom!
> 
> Day 16, and I have for y'all a little End of Series AU

**“Farewell then, people of Remnant.”**

And with that, the God of Darkness vanished once more in a column of energy up into the sky, narrowly missing a repeat of His last departure from the planet by passing carelessly through the moon.

**“When you are ready,”** the God of Light offered as He waved His hand, creating a shimmering golden passageway that lead to an expanse of solid white,  **“step through this passage, and I can hopefully make up for the eons of mistakes I have made in forcing this upon you.”** He stood guard at the doorway, waiting for his quarry to make their final steps.

“Well, I guess this is it,” Oscar sighed, voice a little shaken at the realisation. “I suppose I should say my goodb-” he was interrupted by a mass of petals flying in his face and a weight enveloping him in a tight embrace. 

“I don’t want you to go Oscar,” Ruby admitted tearfully. “You’re so young, and to do this to yourself now?”

“I know Ruby, but I dare say that you have been shouldering far more responsibility than myself for far longer.”

“Ruby Rose,” Salem interjected, the winces and pained looks from where Ruby’s silver eye powers really did a number on her during their battle, “you are a person unlike many others I have encountered in all my years on this planet. Even when facing the insurmountable odds I levied against you and your companions, you soldiered on. Your mother will be very proud of you.”

“Sh… My Mom…  _ w-will _ … be… proud?”

“What are you talking about?” Yang added, rushing up to Ruby’s side on hearing those words.

“I fear I may have been misleading with my words a few times in the past. Your mother did indeed once say the same things to me that you had back in Atlas. You were indeed a fool just as she was for trying to stop me. But you were not so much like her that you tried to accomplish this task alone, nor did you fail. But I never once mentioned her in the past tense, only her actions.” Hope began welling up in the sisters’ eyes. “Grimm may be mindless in your eyes, but their actions can always be overridden by my bidding should I choose. I shall have a few Grimm wait with a parting gift for you two at the front of my palace.” The smile she gave was not one of calculated and overpowering confidence as it once was before, but instead seemed like a genuine, maternal smile that the whole team knew stemmed from the children she had at some point with Ozma’s first reincarnation many millennia ago. “A thank you, for giving me back my freedom.”

“I…” Ruby was seldom lost for words. Being the leader she was meant she was very good at coming up with what needed to be said when the time was needed. But now, on hearing what she thought she was hearing, both she and Yang were all but blubbering messes in front of what was the woman who had caused so much pain in their lives, indirectly or otherwise. Blake and Weiss came up to the sisters, hugging the pair of them in a group huddle that let the pair of them express their emotions.

“Team RWBY.” The four girls stared up at Salem, who had walked to the doorway, her skin glowing in such a way from the backlight of the portal to the afterlife that the Grimm features of her visage seemingly disappeared, leaving only the look of the girl in the tower behind. “You remind me so much of my daughters.” And with that, as a lone tear fell from her eyes, Salem stepped through, greeting death like a long lost friend.

It took far longer for Oscar to also make the journey, mostly due to there being far more people to say goodbye to him. Nora constantly tried to get him to stay, but he knew his role in this war, and now was his time to play that part.

The mystical door shut behind him. Salem was gone, as was Oscar, and the secret war that they had been fighting long before their time was over.

**“I shall fulfil one last act,”** the God of Light exclaimed, waving His hands before Him and enveloping all those present in a brilliant light. When it faded they stood at the foot of Salem’s palace in the Everdark.  **“As recompense, I too shall heal that which would otherwise be impossible to heal.”** Another wave of the hand, but this time no one noticed anything.

“Uhh, what happened?” Yang asked, a little perplexed at His action as she glanced down at her arm, expecting skin and bone to replace metal and oil.

**“That was not for any of you. But that is all I shall do. I too will leave this planet for good, but thank you to you all for showing my brother and I the error of our ways. It seems we realise now that even Gods are not perfect.”** The God bowed His head slightly, then left in a smattering of golden flakes.

“Okay seriously, does anyone know what just happened?”

“Ruby?”

All breath escaped the young silver eyed warrior’s body on hearing that voice. It was one she only really recalled in dreams, like a spirit floating through her subconscious. 

The slow spin Ruby made towards the source of the voice felt just as long as the time she’d spent not hearing it, but when she turned around and saw what most would think was a mirror image of herself standing there with a white cloak instead of a red one, the tears didn’t give her a second to comprehend as they came flooding out.

“M-mom?”

There was barely time to react as Ruby dashed towards the woman, crying like there was no tomorrow into the arms of a woman the world all but believed dead. Yang stood there in shock as well, but remained unmoving.

“Hey,” Blake whispered into her ear, squeezing her hand to bring her back. “You good?”

“That’s… that’s my Mom…”

“Yes it is, baby." Yang simply stared, unmoving even as her mind was working overtime. "Are you going to go talk to her?”

“Ruby hasn’t seen Summer since she was three," she reasoned. "I doubt she could barely remember her.”

“That doesn’t mean  _ you _ can’t say hi,” Blake mentioned, planting a kiss on her girlfriend’s cheek, finally getting a reaction from the blonde. “You’re free to do whatever you want, but you have to remember, she was your Mom too. Do you remember what you told me, back at Beacon? About Super Mom Super Rose - Slayer of Grimm and Baker of Cookies? Go talk to her. And seeing as how the world is free from the imminent threat of death by Immortal Grimm Lady, I think this might be the perfect time to start family introductions.”

Yang looked at her with what was initially shock, but that morphed into a smile that made the world shine brighter in Blake’s eyes. “Alright, but I’m going on ahead. You bring Weiss along.”

“Sure thing.” With a quick peck on the lips, the blonde ran off to go speak with Summer Rose for the first time since she was young. Blake did what was asked of her and brought Weiss along to meet Summer once the Rose-Xiao Long’s had their reunion. 

Blake saw Yang act far less mature than she had in a long time in that first moment of walking up to the three, giving way to the childish side of her that Blake was certain she’d given up to become a mother figure to Ruby when Summer disappeared and her dad folded in on himself in grief. 

But, as she had said not moments before, Yang was free to do whatever she liked. It was their life now, and they could live it however they wished.


	17. Dog

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm, how can I make the word "Dog" not about the word Dog?
> 
> By making it about DRAGONS!! 
> 
> (Mandatory Dragon AU fulfilment has been fulfilled)

“Tales had been told over countless generations of these mythical creatures.

“Long ago, before the Rise of Men and Faunus, there were Dragons. And the dragons were creatures of great power, razing forests or raising mountains wherever they flew to show off their dominance to the creatures of the land. 

“When humanity surfaced, the Dragons made themselves sparser in the world - they were acutely aware of man’s potential, so they ran to the caves and deep within the mountains where they lived as legends of those who happened to spot them for many years. 

“But one man grew brave. He heard the stories of the dragons, giant creatures who flew and could breathe all the elements around them, and he wanted to prove them to be more than legend. So he set off to find one, with sword in hand and armour on his back. 

“The man climbed the mountains to the far north of his village, he trekked through the caves until he was deep within, and he achieved what he came for - there before him was the sight of a brilliant dragon.

“Unfortunately for him, he was an arrogant bastard, and didn’t once consider the fact that he was, at the time of his soon to be death, only twenty four years old. This dragon had existed for hundreds and hundreds of years, with scales thick enough to survive the harsh colds of high altitudes and the scorching heats of the magma lakes it could choose to rest nearby. The man barely got a full swing in before his sword broke against the hide of the creature, and was dead before anything more came from his mouth.

“It was a few hundred years after that fiasco when a woman was out fishing for her family when a young dragon came to her with a pleading look in its eyes. In the years since dragons were last seen, they were no longer the giants of the sky as they had been before, but instead grew to maybe the size of one and a half horses end to end, with a wingspan that equalled about two horses. The woman travelled with the creature for about a mile until she came across a den where there were eggs. Dragon eggs. And that was when she noticed the wound on the dragon. 

“It was injured, and saw the woman before it, and knew she would be kind and gentle enough to aid the dragon’s recovery before the birth of its children, for it believed it would not make it without aid to see its offspring survive long. 

“And that is what she did.

“Over the next few weeks, the woman made journeys out to the cave alone, and helped sort out the injured creature, providing medicines and what little comfort she could to the large beast. 

“Eventually, the eggs hatched, and the woman was present witnessing the birth of these majestic creatures. One of the babies came to her instead of its true parent, but by this point it was too late to get it to imprint on anyone else.

“She looked up at the dragon, who understood what this meant, and it gave a bow of respect.

“And that is how the first dragon rider came to be. From that day on, that dragon grew to be that woman’s loyal protector, and when it was old and strong enough to do so, her family fashioned a saddle for her to experience flight safely on the back of her protector. And ever since that day, women would sail out to Rumah Naga - the creatures’ new residence ever since that fateful meeting by the lake and the word of the kind woman’s actions spread between the dragons - once every ten years to find their protector. 

“No men could ever journey to Rumah Naga; the actions of man tainted their perception of that sex far beyond repair.

“Some women would not be successful in finding a dragon for them, but for others they were among the elite ladies of the world.

“Their dragons were strong, loyal and stoic creatures who could and would protect their owner with everything in their possession.”

“Yang, I know all this,” Blake huffed, chucking a large stick off to one side, “why are you telling me this story?”

“Because Blake,” she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose as the ground shook beneath them four feet collided with the ground, “dragons are meant to be these creatures of immeasurable power compared to us, they are loyal, brave and will protect us from as much harm as they can.”

“Yeah?” Blake turned to smile at her dragon approaching, bringing about another heavy sigh from her closest friend.

“And yet here you are, playing catch with your dragon as if it was a giant dog!”

“What is so wrong with that?” Blake shot back, scratching her eleven foot long dragon with vibrant gold and bleached yellow, scales behind the ear, causing it to growl in delight at the attention it was receiving from its Faunus and dropping the stick that had been thrown for it. “Buttercup is all of those things.”

“And apparently your pet too! You decided to give your dragon - a creature descended from the mighty beasts that roamed the lands before humanity even came to be - the name Buttercup.”

“What, and ‘Ember’ is so much better than that, is it?” On hearing its name, Yang’s dragon jumped down from the tree it was resting in, its nine and a half foot long body of deep burnt orange scales reflecting a glorious red sheen off it as it stood proudly behind its human.

“Don’t mock the name. Ember is a great name, ain’t it buddy?” The dragon let out an affirmative grunt, side eyeing Buttercup as Blake threw the stick once more and the golden dragon raced to go retrieve it.

“Uh huh, but you can’t deny that you sometimes do the voice when talking to Ember.” Blake stared at Yang, waiting for her to flinch. She was good; not even a hint of flinching. Plan B it was then. “ _~Does she do the voice, Ember? ~Does she praise you like a good dragon?_ ” 

The result was instant; Ember’s face lit up and it lowered its body expectantly, causing Yang to blush very prominently. Blake stood their smirking, waiting for Yang to yield and give Ember the attention they deserved and had clearly been promised on hearing that voice Yang did when she was proud of them and they deserved attention and rewards.

“Oh fuck you.”


	18. Mark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Going back to Beacon for Day 18 and the prompt Mark.
> 
> Tests are fun, said hardly anyone ever...

Even though they were at a school geared towards becoming Huntsmen and Huntresses, they still had to take exams. And exams were never fun before. Now, they  _ really _ weren’t fun.

In her defence, she was the only child of Ghira and Kali Belladonna; former leaders of the White Fang and political figures back in Kuo Kuana. And from there, she spent the latter half of her childhood under an organisation that was more focussed on furthering the acceptance of her people than they were educating their members on the basics of things like Math and Science - the only ‘tests’ she had were ‘How stealthily can you be at completing these tasks in enemy territory? You lose points for every problem that occurs. Side note, points could mean anything from rations to decent shifts of work.’ 

In her life, exams as she now knew them were never really a thing.

So why did it pain her to see that red mark on the paper?

“Hey, bestie! How’d the test go?” 

“Oh, hey Yang.” Blake silently cursed to herself the moment those words left her mouth. Yang was going to know what was up immediately just from the way she answered.

“Oof, rough one, was it? Mind if I take a look? I promise I won’t make any sort of remark on the score.” The Faunus was hesitant to agree to those conditions, but Yang had always been a rock for her in tumultuous times, and this certainly counted.

“Sure. It’s on the desk.” 

Yang went over to it, her face still bright with her usual happiness. She looked at the scorecard for her test, and it did drop a bit. Seeing that reaction, Blake turned away, facing the wall in shame.

“Hey.” There was no use responding. “Hey Blake.” What was the point in looking at Yang, she knew what to expect. “C’mon Blake, I know you heard me, your bow twitched each time. Unless you have some food stuck under there, in which case - mind if I grab some?”

“Really, Yang?”

“Of course not. But I gotcha to look at me though, didn’t I?” Blake didn’t want to answer that. “Do you know what this means, this grade?”

“That I still passed. Whoop whoop, throw up some party streamers. A C-Grade isn’t going to get me anywhere Yang. I’m bringing the team down with my poor scores!” Yang heard the pain in her voice, the years of hurt coming through in her words.

“No Blake, no it does not. You are so smart, so much smarter than these tests will ever prove to you. It’s just a mark on a piece of paper. Is a piece of paper going to tell you how well executed the next Bumblebee Combo is going to be in the Solitas Tundra against a herd of Ursa?”

“Ursa don’t live up in Solitas, Yang.”

“See?! I wouldn’t know that!” The response did get the barest hints of a grin off Blake. “There we go. And it’s a C+, almost a B-Grade. Do you know what your grade  _ actually _ means though?”

The Faunus turned to her friend, who stood nearby but never invaded her personal space when she was like this. Blake appreciated that - letting  _ her _ be in charge of when people can come into her personal bubble. “What does it mean then, Yang?”

“It means ‘Cheer up, Ice-Cream will make it better’!” Blake couldn’t keep the down on her luck mood going on hearing that; she broke into a fit of giggles. “True story. And I just scraped in a B, so my grade means ‘Brilliant Result, get Ice-Cream to celebrate!’” By now, the giggling became full blown laughter, to the point where even Yang was having a hard time keeping a straight face. “Come on though, I’m serious. Get changed out of our uniform, and we’ll take the Bullhead down to Vale and grab some dessert. My treat.”

Blake liked the sound of that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone catch the "The Room" reference? ;)


	19. Admire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day 19, and I finally get to talk about one of my absolute passions!!!  
> Like, it's not something I talk about a lot, particularly online, but man oh man, do I like space.

It wasn’t too often that Blake got to relive aspects of her time in the White Fang with a positive spin to them. 

Thinking back on things such as reading, it would be marred by the constant wants and demands of Adam (mostly) seeking affection or attention, as no one else in the camp at the time would give him either. Oh, to go back in time and tell that stupid ass what she really thought of him. 

But she did remember how reading was escapism for her, how the words on the page transported her to another realm of existence, another time, and the world around her ceased to be. She could forget where she was and live the life of someone as mundane as an ordinary thirteen year old girl. Now, reading was a way to free her mind, to let her know that the world was as expansive and incredible as the books she had read.

Camping was much the same. Adam (again…) made camping seem like a chore. 

There was extensive searching of the surrounding area to ensure that the site was fit for purpose. There was to be guards posted everywhere they could to secure their position and alert them of intruders as early as possible. Their sleeping arrangements were never out in the open, as having three, five, eight tents pitched in the middle of a field is far easier to spot and far less incognito than the same amount of tents camouflaged among the leaves and brush of the woods. Speaking of, her quarters were with Adam more often than they weren’t. 

Ugh, even  _ thinking _ about that again made her retch.

But when she thought of camping now…

“Marshmallows! Get yer marshmallows! Sugary sweet, and perfect to eat!”

She had to admit, Yang made the most out of a half an hour’s worth of collected firewood, a truck bed, a blow up mattress, two blankets (one for each of them) and a jumbo bag of big ol’ marshmallows. Then again, Blake wouldn’t put that entirely on the food - she was pretty sure that the company did most of the heavy lifting there.

“I’ll take a marshmallow please, but only if I can snuggle with you, sweetheart. When’s your shift end?”

Yang chuckled at the idea Blake had going here, so she played along as she stuck her marshmallow back into the fire. “Well, fortunately for you, my shift is almost over. In fact, going by the clock, it’ll be over right… about…” The moment Yang’s marshmallow visibly caught fire was when she finished off her sentence, “now.”

“You are such a dork,” Blake told her as she claimed her non-burning marshmallow on a stick from Yang, who jumped up next to her on her truck bed seat, blowing out the makeshift torch she’d made so that she could eat it.

“I guess,” she admitted, taking a delicate bite from the crispy exterior of her burning hot treat. “But I hear I’m also a great cook.”

Blake scoffed at that; if Yang thought that was all she had going for her, she had a rude awakening coming when Blake got the chance to list off the rather full list of things Yang did that made her feel home.

The couple talked for an hour or two about nothing much at all, occasionally topping up the fire when it dimmed, roasting a few more marshmallows over the crackling flames, but soon they let the embers burn and die out, and the marshmallows were store away back in the bag underneath the driver’s seat. They may be ‘Certified and Qualified Badasses™ ‘ and probably two of the most dangerous things in the woods right now, but a stray bear stumbling upon the scent of their food and greeting them in the night was not on the list of things they wanted tonight.

It was just them, their blankets, and the conversation they were holding. That was, until Blake glanced up.

“Holy shit…” Yang’s gaze drifted up too, and her breath was equally blown away.

“Wow. Just… wow.”

Remnant was a very bright place as a planet, for the most part. During the nights in Vale or Atlas or Mantle, there were always Dust Lamps brightening up the area so people weren’t left in the complete dark at the mercy of the Grimm that stalked in the night. And with Mantle, there was the added ‘bonus’ if you wanted to call it that of having the city of Atlas obscuring part of the sky as well. 

Those areas that were free from the lights of the world around them were fairly spaced apart, but often were clouded by… well, lots of cloud cover. That, or it was too cold to stay out for very long. 

Tonight, on a pleasant late summer evening on the northern side of Vale, the pair could simply stare up and look at the night sky in all its unobstructed glory. 

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” 

“It’s breathtaking. So many stars in the sky.” 

“Yeah. Look, if you look just there, you can see the binary stars Zech AR1N and Zech A7YN. They’ve got some really interesting history behind them; see, no one really knows how everything came to be outside of this world - and even then, that fact’s a little vague and constantly up for debate - but we’ve learnt through lots of observations and scientific hypotheses that our universe is expanding outwards at a rate far beyond our understanding. 

“Light travels as a wave at a certain frequency. When things move away from us, the wavelengths are further apart and light from those objects appears red, but when they’re approaching, they look blue because they appear closer together in our eyes. The two Zech stars are travelling at a perfect universal speed so that, when we observe them, they aren’t moving anywhere universally in relation to us. But also, as they are a binary star system, they orbit each other. So even though they don’t move away from us, they do rotate around each other, which means they constantly shift in between reds and blues when looked at through telescopes, almost looking purple and pink as well as blue. 

“The term Binary star system was actually coined from seeing these stars, and gave people the basis of the Bisexual flag colours. Their reasoning was that there’s two choices in colour for when stars colour shift in our sky - red or blue - which could in theory represent heteronormality of ‘attraction to the male sex’ and ‘attraction to the female sex’. But then there’s the Zech stars that picked neither and both of those choices, and much like bisexuals can exhibit various different degrees of attraction, so too could the Zech stars show a range of different colours between the two extremes of the spectr…” it was only then that Blake realised that Yang had been staring at her for the best part of what must have been five minutes or so. “What?”

“Nothing. I just… I admire your passion about these sorts of things.” 

“You don’t mean that,” she mumbled.

Yang turned to fully face Blake as she insisted, “no, I really do. Not many people could look up at the sky and point out all the different constellations like I am imagining you can, or fire off various different facts about what people believe about space with such a knowledgeable passion, especially for someone not working in the field. Ever thought about a career change?”

The blush on Blake’s face was very strong now. “Not really. I just… it was one of the things I didn’t really get to experience in person often. I would be out under the stars, but I never got to see them, so whenever I got a chance to go to a library, I would take a fiction book or two, and I would often take one on astrology and just read. Over time, I guess that knowledge built up.”

“Well, do you want to tell me more? Because I am very happy to listen to you spout science at me all night until I fall asleep.”

With a reinvigorated smile, Blake rolled onto her back and cast her eyes to the sky once more. “Ah! Now just up there, a little way above the trees, you can see the Dunkleman Nebula.”

“That glowing cloud-like thing above the horizon?”

“That’s the one. Now, this Nebula has a really fascinating backstory too…”


	20. Bind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bind - fitting, considering that this is my best and closest friend's birthday. We're thick as thieves, our threads woven together now forever and a day. 
> 
> And so, I decided to share that in today's story. This is for you, Tink

There comes a day in most people’s lives where the fates come together and bind together the threads of the world that were meant to cross.

The threads may have been crossing for many years before then, dancing around each other blissfully unaware where their combined destinies lay. Some crash into one another at the speed of love, and are almost instantly tied to one another forever and a lifetime.

The strings of fate that bound one Yang Xiao Long and one Blake Belladonna were, fortunately, more inclined to the former. Though they were not as pleasant as they could have been.

The Fates saw these two girls together for the first time at Beacon. They knew right away that the girls’ threads were to intertwine. 

_ “I like your bow.” _

_ “Thanks.” _

_ “It goes great with your… pyjamas.” _

It was just going to take a while.

After that night - where it turns out the threads were  _ dropped _ and the interaction went poorly as a result - they had the initiation of Beacon’s new freshmen. The Fates made sure to better take care of the threads this time, and for the first time they intertwined. 

_ “I could have taken him.” _

The Fates began weaving their intricate pattern of affection and affirmation and love and friendship for the two girls. It was music to their ears, bliss for their soul, two people absolutely made for each other working in harmony with one another for the rest of their liv-

_ “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” _

It was rare that the threads of two people would unravel so spectacularly (and they did not under any circumstance use the term in any positive light.) One crimson knot in their tapestry of gold and purple, and suddenly everything fell apart.

Much like Blake Belladonna, the Fates too were very sorry for what befell the pair.

Seeing the girls go their own separate ways hurt the Fates even more than they ever believed a separation could; they were supposed to be together! But one’s depression ground her down to a shell of her former self, and the other returned to base instincts and ran from her troubles back home on the other side of the planet. 

Their threads had never been more divided if they had tried.

But there were hints of hope. The odd glance at a stack of books here, a friend name dropping the other there.

_ “A part of me is missing. And it’s  _ **_never_ ** _ coming back.” _

_ “...And Yang was ‘Strength’.” _

And the Fates, forever locked in to only observe and cut and weave the threads of life where appropriate, took those moments in the year they were apart, and they grew hopeful.

They saw how each of the paths the girls had taken were beginning to bring them back together.

_ “What if I needed her here for me?” _

_ “I’m going. And I will stand by myself if I have to.” _

They saw how the Faunus of Menagerie and the humans hunting the Relic of Knowledge converged for two individual purposes, but when those purposes intersected… 

_ “Yang?” _

...the tapestry was woven anew.

And it was glorious once again. The subtle interactions the pair were sharing, broken once before and not willing to risk what they have with another rough patch, but still doing their best to be there for one another. Even a bout with The Apathy, Creatures of Grimm that feed on the will of those around them, found a tough time breaking through the adoration the two had for one another.

_ “It’s nice to finally have some time to ourselves, don’t you think?” … “How does it feel to be alone?” _

But, of course, the Thread Breaker had to appear again. It was always him, every time. 

_ “I’m not alone.” _

And this time, against their better judgement and accepting the repercussions that would come of shifting the balance of the world, they nudged the world the right way.

_ “Oh…” _

It was going to happen sooner or later, but to have the girls’ greatest hurdle eliminated by their own hands was a way they truly believed would bind the girls forever in a way none like them in their time could match.


	21. Bee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bee. Well, this one was destined to be used for this month, wasn't it?
> 
> And, as destiny was one our side with the prompts, how about we double down on what we did yesterday and make this a Soul Mate AU (can strike that one off the list too now)

Stories have been told about Soulmates for generations.

The Glowing Light for your romantic partner and the Red String for your platonic partner.

The tattoo of your Partner’s spirit animal on your body.

Seeing colour on meeting them for the first time.

Wearing the same hat (the tale was well beyond the realms of absurdity to be sure, but it made for a hilarious story to read through when you were feeling low)

Another tattoo one, this time of the first words you’d hear them say.

All interesting and unique, and rather romantic (except for the same hat story. Fuck the romance that was in the same hat story. You read the same hat story for the idiocy of it, and if you claimed you read it for the romance, you are lying to yourself.)

This story has very little in common with those stories.

Because this one is about Bees.

...and it’s slightly more like the same hat story than you’d think.

~~~~~~~~~~

The world was a very weird place.

Soulmates were a thing, sure. But the way you found them could be… dangerous.

One in every 75,612 babies are born every day with a soulmate. That same number are born without, but learn of them upon the other’s birth. See, when the younger of a soulmate pair is born, the first animal they see - be it in real life, or in a photo - they become fixated on endlessly. The older of the two often becomes fixated on that same animal themselves around the same time, be it in real life, or on a page or Scroll screen. The eyes of the soulmates will almost glow with a strange light, but always in the colour of their other half’s eyes, and the animal they’re fixated on is the animal that brings them together. 

Now, life would be easy if that was it - your parents saw your future partner’s eye colour and the animal that brings you together, they tell you when you’re old enough - great! But this world was a very weird place.

See, soulmates were scarce because of the selfishness of humankind. 

Some of the first parents of soulmates grew anxious for their children. Their little girl or boy spent their whole life not knowing that they were destined to meet someone and fall in love, all thanks to the animal they became fixated on as a baby. So they told their kid everything; they had a soulmate, this was their soulmate’s eye colour, this was the animal that would bring them together in love. 

Do you know the superstition of twins separated at birth? That should one learn of the other’s existence, they would both immediately perish? 

Soulmates were similar; should soulmates be told of their other half’s eye colour and the animal to bring them together before they met, then the animal they were fixated on is not the one to bring them together in love, but instead in death. In some cruel twists of fate, it could be the exact same animal that kills them in the exact same incident, the cause for their death the one and only time they would be together. And death wouldn’t come instantly either, unlike separated twins; when the stars aligned just right and there was one of those animals nearby each of them, death came for you swiftly. But not before.

That’s why Yang hated that she had a soulmate.

She hated Raven Branwen for the same reason.

Alcoholism was a trait that ran through the Branwen bloodline, it seemed. And Raven clearly wasn’t thinking straight when she decided to rock up to her six year old daughter’s birthday party so drunk you could smell her before you heard her or saw her, and the fact she knocked over nearly everything she touched meant you could definitely hear her coming.

“You ruwnd ma lyff, you fuk!” 

“Raven!” Tai shot back suddenly, frightening the kids around him as he approached the dark haired drunk. “You are not ruining your daughter’s birthday party with this… this nonsense.” His voice dropped to a harsh whisper as he told her with no uncertainty, “leave now before I drag you out of my house.”

“Oh pish off Tai. Yor littl… sunny draggun stared at a bee when she was fyv munfs old.” 

“Raven, no!” Summer cried out, her hands balling in front of her face as tears appeared in the corners of her silver eyes. All the kids were really confused at this now; adults don’t get scared, yet Yang’s Mommy and Daddy were really scared. The big bad woman must be scary.

“What? She’s fyne; she will hav her golden eyyd soulmate to look aftr her when she’s older.”

“That’s it, come on!” He looked back at them all, a sudden panic in his eyes as he called Summer’s name out one way and he grabbed Raven by the arm and forcefully removed his ex-wife in the other direction.

“Kids, with me, into the kitchen. Now!” It was hardly an order worth listening to, as Summer was in tears. And, seeing her Mommy in tears, little 3 year old Ruby started crying. And soon most of the guests were crying too. There was just so much crying for a 6 year olds birthday party, you’d assume someone ordered a clown to show up at a coulrophobic anonymous meeting. Or just any meeting in general.

Yang didn’t know what to do; every time she asked, her curiosity got shut down immediately, as if the subject was just too scary to bring up. So Yang bided her time, and eventually researched it when she was about twelve years old.

That led to a very self-destructive adolescence. The match had been provided by Raven’s drunken ramblings at the worst birthday party she’d had to date; the dynamite at the end came from that page on Cross Continental Digital Superhighway, or CCDS; and the fuse that connected to two being Summer Rose’s unexplained passing when Yang was only 7 years old. After she learnt about her soulmate curse, she blamed herself for Summer’s death.

Self destructive never meant inebriated though. Yang saw what that did to a life and told herself no. She didn’t care if the crowds she hung with throughout Signal were going out getting absolutely pavement licking kershnickered on the regular despite being grossly underage to do so, she would be the sensible one in that scenario and instead chose to destroy herself in  _ other _ ways.

She saw no point in it all - her life was over, it was only a matter of time before the end came. She swore off honey, she refused to be near plants, she’d seal herself in her room and not come out unless for school, and even then it was tough getting her outside. 

It took most of her schooling before something clicked in her mind with some help from none other than her sobered up and years clean uncle Qrow.

“Listen kid, I am fully aware that what Raven did to you that day was unacceptable. If you want to go and hate her for the rest of your life, I don’t blame ya. But how are you going to spend the rest of your life? Are you going to be miserable, then when the time comes you’re happy for a brief moment now your pain is gone? Or do you want to make the most of what time you have left? Yeah, if you go, you’re going to know how, but take that away and what makes you different to everyone else out there? You don’t know how long you’ve got left here - make the time count.”

Yang applied herself  _ hard _ after that.

She kept herself to herself at weekends (some old habits do really die hard), but instead of wallowing in self hate, it was spent cramming every piece of knowledge she could in. She was naturally gifted at studying, and could retain information far better than she ever believed she could.

Her grades shot up to the point teachers were having fears of Yang cheating, only for her to show them that they were wrong time and again on proof being provided. She graduated Signal and eventually Beacon, proving her worth and doing right by the name Summer Rose, along with the woman’s own young prodigy Ruby by her side.

But destiny had been waiting for her, and one simply could not stop the unstoppable tide of time, even if she had forgotten all about its approach.

One walk home from her work at Haven’s Auto-Haven - just a little appliance of her acquired skills in a garage before she could find something solid and progressive in either the engineering or mechanical engineering fields - when the faint buzzing sound caught her ear. She swatted at the sound, but continued walking. 

That was, until the sound grew. And grew. And  _ grew. _ Yang spun around to see twenty bees all swarming angrily at her.

She didn’t know what she had done, but these fuckers were going to have to work for their kill. Yang ran.

The buzzing followed her, but she still ran. She never got to say goodbye to Ruby, or her Dad, or Uncle Qrow. She wished she could speak to her friend Weiss one last time too - they parted ways on a less than positive note last time, and it would hurt her so much to have the memory of the pair’s final interaction be a negative one. What if Weiss started blaming  _ herself _ for Yang’s death, just as she had done with Summer-

“Watch out!”

“Wha-?”

***KTHUNN!***

Darkness.

~~~~~~~~~~

The funny thing about soulmates, is that not everything is black and white. When things go smoothly, your soul animal brings you together in love. When the two parties are told of one another, the animals bring death.

But when only  _ one _ party is told, well - it’s a mix of both. The animals do bring the soulmates together, but it’s going to hurt when they do.

Yang sat up from her hospital bed slowly, the throbbing from the impact to… whatever it was she impacted paining her to do anything.

“Oh, fuck me…” she grimaced, steadying her swaying body as she rose to a seating position.

“Well, I know we’re soulmates and everything,” an unfamiliar voice told her, its smooth tone drawing her attention to it. Yang opened her eyes and saw this beautiful figure with jet black hair that shimmered purple under the right light, and golden amber eyes that struck a chord with Yang’s very being. She hated being wired up to the heart rate monitor as she was - everyone present (so fortunately, just herself and this gorgeous stranger) saw her heart skip a beat upon laying her eyes on her. “But shouldn’t we at least get to know each other a bit more before you make that sort of offer to me?”

Yang could only stare, lips curling upwards in a goofy smile as she just took in the sight of the woman before her.

“Hi.”

The dark haired beauty in front of her giggled - Gods, it was such an enchanting sound, she could listen to it forever. “Hi.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever get to meet you.”

“Well, my whole family are very big believers in soulmates, so they never even let on.” 

And for that, Yang couldn’t  _ bee _ any more glad.

~~~~~~~~~~

**BONUS**

On thinking that last thought, Yang glanced up, but recoiled at the sight. 

It was the Ghost of Yang from _Chapter 3_ , furiously shaking her head with a panicked expression on her face. 

Puns, the ghost had decided in the days since its own Blake had murdered her for overusing Leak jokes, were NOT worth dying for. Especially Death by Soulmate, as this Yang could have succumbed to had that thought gone out into the world.

And so, the Ghost of Chapter 3 Yang travelled the stories of the world and stopped any other "Punny" Yangs from falling victim as she did.

It was quite noble, if somewhat tangentially selfish


	22. Motorcycle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's revel in the fact that Bee-tober not only gave us "Bee" yesterday, but "Motorcycle" today

“What do you  _ mean, _ ‘She just left us alone here’ Jaune?!”

_ {“I mean exactly that Blake,”} _ Jaune replied, fear in his voice but still the thankfulness that Blake wasn’t in his direct presence also apparent,  _ {“she mentioned she had a very important task to complete and just left us.} _

Blake could only groan at that. Yang was a loyal friend, and a fierce fighter. Even when things got rough, she would never just leave like… like Blake had done.

_ {“She gave us no indication as to where. She just took the bike and left.”} _

Wait, bike?

“Jaune, when did you get bikes?”

_ {“Oh… um, we kind of… borrowed them from an Atlas outpost. Yang mentioned it would make travelling around Mantle quicker and easier, and would make us harder to pin down.”} _

The pieces aligned in Blake’s head. She wasn’t quite sure how she got to where she did from there, but she got there nonetheless, and with it, she extrapolated her answer.

“May, Joanna, are there any mechanics or garages here in Mantle?”

“There’s a couple around the city,” the blue haired Happy Huntress replied, “why?”

“Any of them on the eastern side of Mantle?”

“Just the one,” Joanna answered. “Platinum Auto Trader and Cosmetics.”

“Great, hold on to that thought. Jaune?”

_ {“Yeah Blake?”} _

“Don’t wait up on Yang if possible. Continue working on evacuating the citizens as best you can into the crater. Keep yourselves and the people safe, don’t push yourselves too hard now you’re down a person. I’m going to find Yang.”

_ {“Sure thing Blake. How did you figure out where she was?”} _

“I’ll explain when I bring her back to you.” Their call ended as Blake spun to the two senior Huntresses among them. “What’s the quickest way to that garage you mentioned?”

~~~~~~~~~~

As luck would have it, Platinum was exactly where Yang was when Blake turned up at the establishment around an hour and a half after she got off the call to Jaune. Travel should have only been in the realms of 50 minutes, an hour tops, but unfortunately Team’s RWBY and ORNJ were enemies of Atlas, and as such the route they had to take was far longer and full of far more corner peaking and surveillance camera smashing.

Blake turned up and saw her partner there, earphones in, dancing like she didn’t have a care in the world, with cans of spray paint strewn about on the floor near her.

“Yang.”

No response.

“Yang,” she tried more forcefully.

Still nothing.

Annoyed at this, she made her way to the blonde and grabbed her by the shoulder, frightening her.

“Jeez Blake, you scared me.”

“I scared  _ you?! _ ” she responded aghast at Yang’s response, “Yang, we’re fighting against the immortal human personification of nightmare fuel who rode into Atlas on a Giant Grimm Whale tha-”

“His name is Richard.”

“We are  _ not _ calling it that, and I am angry with you right now, so you don’t get to make jokes!” Yang visibly recoiled at the reprimand from the Faunus, who still continued on after that. “Salem rode into Atlas on a  _ Giant. Grimm. Whale. _ And you just left Ren, Jaune and Oscar on their own! And for what, to come here? What’s so important about here?”

“I…” Yang sighed, moving over to a nearby chair and slumping down into it. “Look, I’m sorry Blake. When the four of us raided that Atlas garage and found these, I realised how much I missed Bumblebee. Riding on this thing back to base, it made me miss my bike so much. Bee was my girl, y’know. I had worked on her since I was twelve years old, tuned her myself, added all the little bells and whistles that made her mine to the point she’s unrecognisable from the standard model she was based on. It was worth losing her the way I did; I wouldn’t change that day for the world, but I miss her everyday. And I guess being back on the seat of a bike again made me sentimental. So I went out and found a craft shop in Mantle, got myself some metallic spray paint, then came here to paint her up in my old colours.” She smiled a nostalgic smile as she gazed at the bike, now sporting a mostly sunflower yellow paint job with a few hints of fiery orange detail on there. “Doing this used to be my way of destressing, and I guess I needed to be reminded of that.”

“Oh Yang.” To say Blake felt guilty for shouting at Yang was an understatement. She knew what it was like to return to some of her older instincts just to feel a sense of comfort at times, and Yang was doing just that. “I should be the one apologising. It wasn’t right for me to get angry at you, not when you were just doing this. I guess I… I was just worried about you. I didn’t want to lose you.”

“You aren’t going to lose me, Blake.” She took Blake’s hand in her own, metal linking with flesh in an unspoken promise. “I just needed time.”

“I get that,” she smiled, leaning forward to rest their foreheads together in comfort. When they moved apart, Blake looked at the bike herself, taking in the paint job Yang had done. “That’s not exactly inconspicuous though, is it?” There was a flash of hurt in Yang’s eyes, but Blake quickly jumped on that, stating, “I’m not judging or criticising, I’m just saying what I see. I know you needed to work on something, and I am not one to stop you, but we’re trying to be undetected by Ironwood.”

Blake watched as heat crept up Yang’s neck as realisation began dawning on her. “Yeah, bright yellow isn’t exactly hidden, is it?”

“That’s fine. But the paint job isn’t finished.” Yang looked a little surprised at that statement at first, but the grin soon grew as Blake continued, “Come on, let’s finish dressing her, then we’re heading back to base.”

And so they did.


	23. Homosexual

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The word of the day - Homosexual - just feels like such an odd and out of place word for the RWBY Universe. At least for most people within it.  
> You'll see what I mean ;)

“I’m sorry Blake, but I can’t  _ not _ laugh at that,” Yang chuckled as she flopped down onto her back on the grass in one of the gardens around Beacon.

It became a regular occurrence for the Bumblebee pairing on their double free period on a Thursday to escape to the gardens. They were in a secluded part of the grounds, and most days it was only them there for the entire time they chose to be there. They could talk freely and be the barely-adults that they were supposed to be.

“Yang, you know the sort of environment Weiss grew up in.”

“Not explicitly,” she mentioned with a shrug, “but I do get it.”

As she sat down next to her far more extroverted teammate, Blake defended their Atlas born friend. “Then you know how difficult this must have been for her to do.”

“Believe me, I do. But it was less what it was and more the wording of it.” Sitting up straight, Yang proceeded to do the best caricature impression of Weiss she could. “~Fellow teammates, I wish for you to be the first to know that I identify as homosexual.~” On finishing, she broke out in laughter once more. “It was just… so  _ formal! _ I just can’t with that girl.”

“Okay, first off - she’s older than you.”

“Only by two months!” Yang protested.

“Still counts,” Blake teased. “And second, I think it was very brave of her. Clearly this was quite a monumental hurdle for her to cross - can you imagine having to hide yourself from such an overbearing figurehead in your life, so much so that you lost almost all your unique identity and are just a facsimile of him? Only to break away later on in life and grow into yourself?”

Yang laid back down again, tucking her arms under her head as she stared up at the sky above. “It’s not the same, but I do get it.”

Blake clued in where Yang was going with this before anything else was said. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, y’know.”

“I know,” she smiled, “but I trust you Blake. You’re my best friend. And besides, I want to tell you.” Blake obliged to the request and laid down next to Yang, arms rested across her chest as opposed to behind her head.

“I guess it was at Signal when I first really knew. I never had any chance to explore any sort of relationship - I spent so long looking after Ruby when we were both kids, then when Dad finally grew out of his funk and I could be just a normal teenager again I… didn’t. I still had those motherly instincts when it came to Ruby, and it was really only at Initiation where I decided to let go of that.

“But that didn’t mean I wasn’t looking. All the boys at Signal were trying their best to get with someone like me, and I hated it, y’know? There was something so off putting to me seeing them try and woo me with ridiculous feats of idiocy. But when it came to the girls at school?” A soft blush grew on Yang’s cheeks, highlighting her freckles in a way Blake found adorable. “That was a different story.

“I got flustered when some of them spoke to me, I laughed when they made jokes that if anyone else would have made I would have groaned or hit them, I always tried to make myself appear presentable whenever I was around them. I didn’t know why I was doing that. Until it fell into place; I had a crush on these girls.

“I never pursued any of these crushes - Gods knows that would have been terrible - but I just knew from then. I never wanted anyone else to know though, so I put up the façade that I still liked guys, I made jokes about it so often I almost started to believe myself again. But deep down I just knew I was only into girls.”

Blake wasn’t sure what to say to that - how could one find the words to accurately portray the pride she was feeling in this moment (pun entirely intended) without detracting from the moment itself? 

She leaned over and rested her forehead on Yang’s shoulder; a sign that she listened to her and supported her whole heartedly.

“Thanks Blake. It’s nice to have it out there, y’know.”

“Yeah,” she answered, aware just a fraction too late how she said it. 

Yang’s head turned slowly, understanding, as she gave her friend a soft and gentle smile. “In your own time. Doesn’t have to be now. Doesn’t have to be ever. But I’m all ears if you want to speak your mind.”

Blake smiled back and rested her head on Yang’s shoulder once more.  _ Not now, _ she told herself,  _ but eventually. _


	24. Race

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 24 is Race (thanks Dorked_Babies00 for pointing out that I missed the title) 
> 
> I was debating what to do with this one for some time, but when I settled on what I did below, I was really happy that I did

There once was a young cat with a gleam in her eye,

And a brilliant bright smile on her face,

She stood with her father, the chief of her people,

And fought for the good of her race.

She stood in the rain and the sun and the wind,

Shouting protests at the front of the rally,

Until one day she spotted a young man crying

Down a dark and grime filled alley.

And the cat was enamoured with the crying man, though

She could not truly say why,

And she thought she would help the young man she saw

For it hurt her to see anyone cry.

Oh poor little cat, desperate to be helpful,

You should have left the man alone,

For your actions have tainted your soul,

And you fear you could no longer return home.

A jaded young cat, now obscuring her ears,

With a book always hiding her face,

She hated the person the man had moulded from her,

She hated her race.

She wanted to fit in, wanted to be normal,

But she couldn’t change what was within.

She wished for a future where Faunus were equal

But her fire for fighting was dimmed.

When along came a lion, though not one like her,

She wore her heart on her sleeve with pride,

And the lion helped bring out the cat’s fighting spirit

And she did it standing by her side.

When the lion, along with the pup and the white wolf,

Found out that the cat hid her ears

They did not attack her, they made her feel things

She had not felt for a number of years.

And in time, through the hardships, the cat realised

That hiding was no longer her place

In the world, so she stood with her teammates with pride

For her family, for her lover, for her race.


	25. Wrestle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the author realises that his choice of subject matter, even right at the VERY START, is completely and utterly out of his knowledge and experience

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah... I know diddly squat about this sort of thing... why did I do this?

With her arms wrapped around Yang’s neck, and Yang’s arms snaked around her waist, it just felt right for Blake to lean up and plant a kiss on Yang’s lips as they stood in their bedroom.

They enjoyed kissing. They felt closer than they ever had before when kissing, and they felt pretty fucking close to one another  _ way _ before their first kiss. But there was something about this one that felt more, in a way the two of them hadn’t really explored.

She couldn’t tell which one of them made the second move (because she had obviously made the first), but soon enough a smile grew on her face as the kiss deepened, her hands instinctively seeking out to cup the sides of Yang’s face. There was a push and pull to this little game they had started; neither willing giving ground yet both letting the other lead the dance.

Eventually they pulled themselves apart, but not before Blake made one final stand and gently bit down on Yang’s lower lip, tugging it ever so slightly as she backed away to see Yang’s reaction. Oh, to see the Dragon of Beacon blushing so heavily at an action she instigated: it was a great Wonder of the World she wished to share with everyone, and a treasure that she and she alone was allowed to see.

“What’s wrong sweetheart?” Blake purred, a sly and knowing grin planted firmly on the Faunus’ features, “having trouble, are we?” There was nary a pause before Yang went in for another kiss, the shock of the moment and the vigor behind it scaring a muffled (obviously) “Eep!” out of Blake. 

The Faunus wouldn’t take that lying down.

In fact…

Blake cleverly shifted round two of their make out session back a couple of paces, steps Yang eagerly followed. She bided her time, sinking into the feeling of Yang kissing her, making her feel loved intimately in a way no one else truly had in her life, almost forgetting the plan due to the euphoria she felt at this moment, before her senses came back like a thief to the scene of a crime. She grabbed Yang by the arms-

“What ar- _ whoa!! _ ”

-and threw Yang over her shoulder down onto the bed.

“Ow! What the h-” before Yang could recover, Blake had leapt onto the bed, straddled her prone partner and pinned her arms behind her head.

There was a hunger in Blake’s amber eyes, but also a smugness as she pecked Yang on the lips teasingly. “Gotcha.”

“I dare say Belladonna,” she chuckled, “that you have - as you say - got me. However,” with a buck of her hips, Yang forced Blake’s hips up, breaking the illusion of control the Faunus had over her partner and, using the limited amount of time she had, shifted all of her weight so that Blake landed on her back instead of the other way around, “I believe  _ I _ am holding the cards here.” 

Blake looked shocked. She had never been bested like that by Yang before, even in their playful tufts, and now she had to wrestle with that fact. “Fine.” Before Yang knew what had happened, there was nothing underneath her. The moment she caught on, a black piece of cloth tried wrapping around her wrists.

“Uh uh, not today!” Yang said, pulling the cloth loose from her wrists and instead gripping it tight with her left hand - it’d be unfair on Blake to use her right arm. “You wanna wrestle, tough girl? Then get in the ring and show me what you got!”

And so it was that the two girls spent the rest of their evening wrestling each other, finding various different ways of 1-upping the other’s crazy elaborate schemes of Uno-Reversing their advances. The original purpose they had made their way into the bedroom for was pushed to the wayside in favour of this… exchange. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry you all bore witness to this


	26. Cower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Superhero AU - that's yet another one off the list. I'm doing well

Toros cocked his head to one side, not unlike a puppy unsure of what the sound was it had just heard, at the question his nemesis Firefist had asked him.

“What?”

“I said, have you heard of the Bunga?”

“Stop stalling, you know how this ends for you! I promised, I would end you, then hunt down my love once more. Nothing will stop me fr-”

“Have. You heard. Of. The Bunga?”

Toros growled in anger at the persistent questioning. “Yes! Yes, I’ve heard of the Bunga! It’s the m-”

“The most advanced and powerful moves in the martial arts world, yes. Invented by Spruce Li - the superhero known as the Great Dragon of The East - for the soul purpose of ending a fight in a definitive way. Drawing the energy from the surrounding area, planting yourself like a tree in the ground and focussing all your internal energy and the energy from around you into a single forward strike. 

“When executed from only half a foot away from the body, it’s said the Bunga, or the Bunga Palm variation, can cause irreparable damage to the recipient’s body. They can also greatly damage the user’s appendages too if used too often or too violently, so it is said that the Great Dragon only ever used the technique to attack from no more than three inches away. He maintained that ethos until his final day, where he had been left no choice but to do more. The Bunga Cross Strike was a move no one has ever thought to replicate.” Firefist took a long, deep breath. “It would take years to master even the standard Bunga, and even if mastered, it would take a good thirty seconds to charge up an attack powerful enough to be classified as a full Bunga strike.”

“Time you don’t have!” Toros raised his sword up, ready to end this rivalry with Firefist once and for all.

“I agree, were I to start now, I wouldn’t have any sort of time to pull off such a devastating attack on my opponent; I’d be dead before I even swung. Fortunately, I had invented a variation of the Bunga.”

“That’s impossible!” Toros bit back, raising his sword higher, a slight shake to the weapon in his grasp as he spoke. “It took your ‘Great Dragon’ years to invent the Bunga. There’s no way someone like you could ever create a move that powerful in such a pitiful amount of time. You are weak, and you are worthless, and you are nothing compared to me!”

“That may be true,” she acknowledged, “and your skill and prowess definitely made itself known to me - I could do nothing but cower at your presence. But that’s the beauty of my new technique; it is a variation of the Bunga, one where I don’t need to root myself in the normal way, I can do it my own way. And it’s not so obvious that I’m preparing an attack so powerful that no single person on this planet could ever hope to withstand.” 

Firefist took another long and steady breath. 

“And the best parts about this all? I have an upper hand on everyone else. And all this back and forth we’ve been having - which, to tell you the truth, I’ve struggled to get through without barfing everywhere - has given me time to think about the name of my new attack…” Firefist flashed a winning grin from under her mask as she felt the surge of energy coalesce squarely in her fist, all the power of her surroundings concentrated to the end of her arm, “…and enough time to charge it!”

The villain Toros - the man formally identifying himself as Adam - realised all too late what a fool he had been, how idiotic of him it was to have been played so easily, and how fucked he truly was, all within the space of time it took the female hero to swing her arm from behind her, the golden glow of energy swirling around her hand, and brought her metal fist up to crash against his chin with the force of a thousand speeding motorbikes as she screamed the name of the Firefist variant of The Bunga, the name of her brand new technique:

**“COWER BUNGA!!!”**

...maybe the name needed a bit more workshopping. Didn’t matter though.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Yang, are you alri- oh Brothers!” Blake physically retched at the sight of her partner; she was used to seeing her returning from battles bloodied and bruised, but this was at a level even beyond. “What on Earth happened to you? You look like you were a stand in stunt woman for a Carrie remake.”

It wasn’t exactly an inaccurate assessment - Yang’s usual Super Suit of gold, black and orange was now entirely blood red, her face was covered in the stuff too, and her hair was now a gradient of colour, with only the tips surviving the bloodbath. It was a gruesome sight to see her partner entering through the window of their apartment, as was the norm on her nights on duty.

“Okay, so… you know how Toros has been  _ really bad _ recently?”

“Yeah?”

“And you are aware of the multiple threats on everyone’s lives he’d been making?”

“Nothing explaining this though, Yang,” she gestured to her friend, body covered in gore.

“I’m getting there. Well, basically, he had learnt about me. And when he learnt about  _ me, _ he then rediscovered  _ you. _ ” Blake paled at that news - she escaped his grasp years ago, set up with a new name and identity in a new place, a place he once again managed to crawl his way to. “So naturally, I had to fight him, he had to do his thing, yadda yadda. But he was unhinged, more so than he usually is. There was no snide comments or ‘diabolical meanderings’ this time, something had fully snapped in him, and he was hell bent on ending this fight as soon as he could, but as brutally as he could too. Eventually, I managed to get him to start talking again, spew his schemes out for me to foil and the like, but it was…” Yang looked her partner in the eyes, Blake’s heart breaking at the sight of tears threatening to begin pooling in the corners, “Blake, I  _ had  _ to do it. There was no other way to do it. If he had gone free today, there would eventually be a world without you because he took you away from me!” The tears fell hard as she clenched her fist, willing the pain to rid her of the memory. “Taking one life to save thousands! He left me no choice!”

“Yang…” Blake removed her business shirt (blood is a pain in the ass to get out of white clothes. While she was being a good girlfriend, she had finished the laundry not an hour before Yang had come back off of duty and she’d be damned if she was putting her shirt in with the mess that was Yang’s uniform, or leaving it until Yang’s uniform was done by which point it would have been coated in the stuff) leaving her olive skin and dark bra exposed to the night, and moved up to comfort her crying girlfriend - the literal superhero of the two of them who finally carried too much responsibility on her shoulders to bear. 


	27. GOAT

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, you thought I would go for the animal?
> 
> WELL YOU THOUGHT WRONG!!!

“Welcome back,” the female called out to the waiting audience in the auditorium and to those watching at home, “to the Remnant Smash Tournament.” 

“We’re back with the final round of the Tournament, the Grand Final between the two top combatants on Remnant.” Ozpin smiled as the camera focussed on him and Salem, the two announcers for the tourney. “An impressive display of talent and skill has brought our two finalists - Blake ‘ **Shad0wCat** ’ Belladonna and Yang ‘ **Y4XLotl** ’ [pronounced Yax-o-lot-l] Xiao Long - here today, and we shall see them fight to be crowned champion in just a moment.” 

“Yang and Blake are well known to all as close friends and partners outside of this arena. But here and now, on the stage,  **Y4XLotl** and  **Shad0wCat** are mortal enemies in this fight of champions.”

“Right you are, Salem. To remind those at home who are just joining us for the Grand Final of the Remnant Smash Tournament,  **Y4XLotl** took on the big man himself ‘ **Di3Qi** ’ [pronounced Daichi] in the qualifying round, surprising everyone with the 3 stock victory against the former champion, then proceeded to beat the second Team CFVY representative to make it here today, ‘ **Dwn-BUN-der** ’, in her quarter final match.”

“Meanwhile, Shad0wCat had a more difficult ascension through her bouts, winning against Miltia ‘ **Junior III** ’ Malachite barely with a scarily close 142% FAir over the twin, then ending  **sesorder** ’s journey in the quarters. No sister vs sister bout this year folks, but I’m sure there’ll be plenty of fights between them elsewhere.” 

“Then, there was the horror of the semifinal match against Adam Taurus that I am sure most of you are aware of.” Ozpin’s tone grew very much darker on saying this.

“Quite. After her victory against the man, Taurus became unprecedentedly violent towards his opponent, even going so far as to draw a knife on her, resulting in the very large break we had to take to ensure that none of what transpired over that time was broadcast to you, the viewers at home. We can confirm that Taurus had been arrested for what was a vicious and violent act towards  **Shad0wCat** , and has been stripped of any title he may have held relating to the tournament scene. He will not be returning to us again, and we wish to remind everyone that there was no one harmed during this time.”

“That event left quite an opportunity for one previously eliminated combatant to return to the stage for a second chance. Although they did not succeed in beating  **Shad0wCat** in the unforeseen third semi final fight, reinstated fighter ‘ **Scoup_de53** [Scoop des Trois]’ did indeed scoop up a third place finish over her own rival Cinder ‘ **NGR1** ’ Fall in the previous bout, a match up we all were wishing we could have seen this year after her loss to Adam in their quarter final fight, but were glad we got to see come to fruition this time. Perhaps next time, it will be under truer and more positive circumstances.” 

“I hope so too.” His smile grew once again. “But now that we have  **Scoup_de53** taking up the third place slot, we need to see who will stand atop the podium as victor -  **Y4XLotl** or  **Shad0wCat** ?”

The feed cut to B-Roll of brief interviews each fighter gave before their final match, as another window opened to show the pair walking from the green room up to the stage, hand in hand.

_“Blake’s had a rough couple of hours,”_ Yang admitted to the camera in her B-Roll, _“I’m not going to lie. The girlfriend inside of me is wanting to comfort her and support her, and I will do that as much as I can when I can. But Yang won’t be up on that stage,_ _**Y4XLotl** will be. And  **Y4XLotl** knows that she is the Greatest of All Time. This tourney is mine, Blake!” _

_ “I won’t lie, this is going to be a very tough match,”  _ Blake said. _“_ _ I can’t let what happened affect me too much, and I know I have nothing to worry about should anything go wrong with this. But  **Y4XLotl** is a seasoned fighter, whereas I’m relatively new. But I’ve trained against Ayuubows that  **Y4XLotl** had set up for me, I know how they have been prepared, and I think I have what it takes to win this.” _

The feed cut back to the main camera just as they got on stage, both of them raising their linked hands in solidarity, letting the audience know that they were in it together. The bumbleby pair looked at one another, love in their eyes for the last time for a few minutes, and with a nod, let go. Yang and Blake had been left there, leaving only the Finalists  **Y4XLotl** and  **Shad0wCat** to move to their respective seats opposite one another.

“And with that, the two Finalists are on the stage, setting up for the final fight - a three stock, Battlefield or FD style match, with the added spectacle of Final Smashes enabled. That’s right ladies and gents, as with the Spice Cream podium showdown, the Smash Ball Item has been activated so that there is an added level of strategy in this final match of the day.”

The pair got comfortable, locking in their respective characters and waiting for the match to begin.

“Interesting choice of characters here by  **Shad0wCat** , opting for Roy as opposed to Zero Suit Samus as she has been all tournament thus far. He’s got less speed than Samus and far less reach, especially with Zero Suit’s tether grab, but he makes up for that with a devastatingly powerful few moves, including that crushing fully charged Neutral B.”

“That he does. And  **Y4XLotl** is obviously sticking with her standard of Luigi, a strong yet unpredictable fighter in the capable hands of this finalist.”

“Indeed he is, but will the man in the shadow of Mario be enough to step out of the darkness and beat  **Shad0wCat** here today? Let’s find out now!”

~~~~~~~~~~

“And that’s another KO for Roy with a counter against that Misfire; clearly that was too much for the damaged Luigi to take at this point. But with a 52.6% deficit, will that be enough to edge out the victory against  **Y4XLotl** as they now have the one stock remaining?” Luigi landed and immediately attempted to capitalise on the invincibility frames provided by the knockout, leaping and swinging with his feet and fists to get a hit, but Roy was being moved around in a way that lost that time and wore off the advantage the green plumber had been given.

“ **Y4XLotl** jumps from screen right to left, but is caught by Roy with a sly Up Tilt that he then capitalises on with a standard A Jab, goes into a Neutral Air, into Forward Air that Luigi tries jumping out of- OOOHHH!!!” Not many people could claim to have seen Salem - Mistress of the Grimm, darkness and evil given human form - screaming madly into a headset as  **Shad0wCat** , underdog of the competition, landed a sweet spot Down Air strike on the Green Plumber, still number two in life and the tournament. But now they could say they’ve seen such a site. “And  **Shad0wCat** takes the final stock with a gnarly zero to death combo with Roy, ending the tournament with a glorious combo and earning  **Shad0wCat** the title of Remnant Smash Champion.”

**Y4XLotl** lay down her controller and reached across the screens to shake  **Shad0wCat** ’s hand, congratulating her opponent on a well fought final match. They couldn’t keep it up much longer, as Yang returned and ran around the divide, leaving Blake up in a massive hug and a kiss on the cheek.

Yang may not have been The Greatest of All Time as she had claimed she would be, but she was happy of this outcome, and she would admit that there was no one else she would rather give that title to instead.


	28. Suit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because yeah, Blake in a suit always makes the most sense

“Are we really doing this?” Yang asked excitedly, fists balled as she bounced up and down on the balls of her feet. 

“Do you take me for a liar, Yang?” Weiss asked, irritation in her voice at the accusation. “Of course we’re doing this.”

The blonde pumped her fist in the air with sheer excitement. “Alright! Fancy clothes shopping here we come!” Weiss fondly rolled her eyes at the display - she knew that there were times she tried too hard to spoil her friends, but to see them get excited at the prospect of something she suggested was… nice. They’d grown accustomed to this over the years they’d known each other, and knew what to expect from her.

“Do I have to wear heels for this one again?” Ruby asked, a little disgruntled at the idea. But Weiss just lay a hand on her shoulder with a warm, comforting smile.

“If you don’t wish to wear heels, we can find a nice flat soled alternative for you if you’d like. Your sister gets zero say on that matter, I’m paying for you all, and so you each get to pick whatever it is you would like to wear.” That brought Ruby’s mood right up as the four of them headed out. 

Attending the Atlas Ball was quite an honour, especially as outsiders to the Academy. But in the same vein, they were licensed Huntresses now, and their official ‘celebration’ was the seven of them standing around in an empty Amity Colosseum with a half-hearted speech from General Ironwood and a decently presented but otherwise underwhelming cake, all while still there in their combat gear. 

It was hardly celebration worthy. 

This was their chance to live up that celebration and dress to the nines, and show the world that Team RWBY was really, really cool.

It was only when the four girls got inside their destination of the Grand Einkaufszentrum in the centre of the Atlas shopping district and started making their way to the shop for their dresses did Yang really start noticing the discomfort Blake was displaying.

She had noticed it earlier - what sort of girlfriend would she have been if she hadn’t? - but Blake seemed eager to participate earlier. But as they approached, that eagerness faded away until there was only discomfort in her eyes.

“Hey, could you give us a minute?” Ruby and Weiss nodded, giving the bees some space. “You doing okay back here Blake?” 

“Huh?” That was a no, Yang immediately deduced. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.” Yang just gave her a look. “Really, I’m okay.”

“Okay. I’ll buy it. So why then, if you are okay, were you spacing out and closing yourself in as the store came into sight?” Yang knew she had something here when Blake’s ears pinned against her skull and she averted her gaze with a blush. So she started with some reassurance. “You can talk to me, you know. I will never judge you for what you want to say.”

Blake let a small smile grow on her face, though she still didn’t look at Yang just yet, as she explained her situation. “Dress shopping… doesn’t feel right for me. I did something for the dance back at Beacon, but only because there wasn’t enough time for me to get anything else sorted.” She chuckled, “it was kind of a last minute decision on my part.”

“You know, I’m still really proud of you for that one.”

“Thanks.” She turned to look at Yang, pink still dusting her cheeks. “This time, we have far more time to prepare, and I want to dress how I wanted to dress back then, and show the people of Atlas who I really am.”

“Have I mentioned that I love it when you’re feisty?” 

“Once or twice.”

“Good, because I do. Now, let’s get you dressed properly.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Weiss turned heads because she was Weiss Schnee, how could she not turn heads? With her beautiful shin length ball gown that sported a very warm peach colour as opposed to her standard wardrobe of colder hues, and with her hair let down in a wave of alabaster locks that draped over her right shoulder, she was nearly unrecognisable as herself, if not for the company she kept.

Ruby turned far fewer heads, a fact she was grateful for. Her dress way nearly the same style as the one she wore back at Beacon, the slightly burnt red colouration remaining too. The only difference was that she didn’t have to wear heels, which was great! Sadly, her height suffered, and with Weiss wearing her death traps, she now felt like the youngest again as even Weiss’ tiny frame stood over her.

Yang turned heads too. Her dress was a deep twilight blue knee length dress decorated with fake gemstones along its left side that was incredibly form fitted at the top that loosened out at the waist so that it flowed outwards, no sleeves to show her muscles and highlight that she was not afraid to display her prosthetic, accompanied by some small black heels and some deep red lipstick. 

But it was Blake who drew the most attention, a fact her teammates were all immensely proud of.

Blake got herself fitted out in a tailored 3-piece midnight blue suit, a touch lighter in colour than Yang’s dress. She wore form fitting thigh high black boots that slid over the top of some well fitting dress trousers that hugged all the right areas without restricting movement at all. The peaked lapels of her matching coloured two button jacket contrasted with the rest of her outfit thus far. Instead of a blue, they were a deep mauve purple that popped just enough to be noticeable without being too much of a distraction - not that she was having trouble being distracting for the rest of the attendees. Her six button waistcoat was in the same deep mauve purple as her jacket lapels, with a back that matched the inner lining of her jacket - a brilliant contrast to the deep dark colours of the outside, it was a pure golden orange lining patterned with small liberty prints scattered over the design in a fantastically vibrant purple. All this was topped off with a wide collared slim fitting black dress shirt; a faint honeycomb-patterned tie, the base colour matching its namesake with the patterning in a slightly more vibrant yellow, tied in a perfect Windsor knot; and a pocket handkerchief in a sunflower yellow, the same colour as her date’s hair.

Blake stole the show from everyone there. She held her head high, ears standing tall and proud atop her head. She was happy and confident in a way that no other piece of clothing really had been before. One would even dare to say that the look suited her very well. And as she strode arm in arm with Yang through the crowds at the Atlas ball, Blake could say that this was definitely worth coming out for.


	29. Sweater

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're in the endgame now; three days left of Bee-tober.

To argue whether Yang was or wasn’t overworked was to argue whether or not the sky was blue on a sunny day.

_ Technically _ it wasn’t blue - it was black because what we call ‘night’ is actually the default of the universe, but because of the sun and the ozone layer, the light rays coming through our atmosphere turns the invisible light rays visible at the blue wavelength of light - and  _ technically _ she wasn’t overworked - all of the tasks given to her were completable and well within her capabilities as a lowly kitchen worker in one of the largest fast food chains on the planet. But are we  _ really _ arguing over technicalities here?

The sky  _ was _ blue on a sunny day, and Yang  _ was _ overworked.

She understood the demands of the job. Heck, all  _ decent _ members of the workforce understood the demands of the job. But when you are a University student paying an arm and a leg to get there (and for once Yang even got to thank the biking accident that she had a couple of years ago for letting her add to her comedic bit for that line by removing her prosthetic when it came time) and you are barely scraping by on what money you are given, sometimes you gotta take the plunge and get yourself a job - however shitty - that at the very least pays some of the bills.

But when Cinder Fall was your boss, unless you were named after a green jewel or a liquid metal, she were hard pressed to do anything right and you wished that time moved quicker so that your shift was over faster.

Cinder was, by all definitions of the word, a sweater. She ran the kitchen ragged day after day, demanding two tasks be completed by one person whilst blaming them for messing up a third that they had no idea they were supposed to be working on. The kitchen was hot, it was stuffy and cramped not from overabundance of bodies, but just from the sheer lack of space provided. There were two cases of fainting employees in the last three weeks alone thanks to the heatwave, but air conditioning of any kind was prohibited.

Yang was surprised she didn’t hear whips cracking behind her when she gave an order; it was like working for the Devil, if the Devil wore an apron and four inch heels in a hectic kitchen of a University town’s busiest fast food joint.

Yang’s only reprieve was the cash register. 

Oh, how she loved her little spot. It gave her a chance to escape the rampage of the kitchen and have some actual decent(ish) human interaction for a change.

And it also gave her a chance to have some absolutely amazing interaction with her favourite customer.

Yang remembered the first day the Faunus came in; it was the tail end of peak times on a Thursday afternoon, before she got to swap out for another poor soul who had to work the evening rush, when a group of four friends walked in. From what she could see, there were two humans - a blue haired male and a super freckled girl with a ponytail - a male Faunus with a monkey tail and abs that she had to remind him to put away whilst in an eating establishment (even though they were a fast food chain, they’d be in and out in five minutes), and hands down the single most beautiful being she ever had the pleasure of witnessing in her nineteen years on the planet.

The cat Faunus, an easy read with her two feline ears protruding from the top of her skull, had flowing locks of jet black hair, and eyes of - if Yang was being entirely honest, irresistibly captivating - amber captured behind thick black framed glasses. Even though she was coming in to get food, she still held a book in her hands, and she wore the softest smile on her features.

Yang could do nothing but stare.

It was like a cherub had been sitting on the girl’s shoulder as she walked in, and shot her right through her heart as Yang glanced her way.

“Yang!”

Oh, wait, no. That was Cinder, instead driving a molten spear of “fuck you” through her gut instead.

“You have work to be doing, do you not?” Yang simply furrowed her brow at Cinder, her eyes darting to the snickering duo of Mercury and Emerald standing behind their boss like Muttley stood behind Dick Dastardly. 

_ Huh, _ Yang pondered to herself, paying her sudden but far from unwelcome thought more mind than her boss,  _ I could totally picture Cinder with a twirly pencil thin moustache. And Emerald would have the Muttley laugh of the two of them for sure. _

“Go serve; that’s why you wanted to be there, is it not?”

“It is, Cinder,” she responded evenly, not giving her obsidian haired orwellian overseer an inch of satisfaction knowing that she’d won that bout. Sadly, when she turned to serve the next customer, the troupe of four were already being seen by her friend Jaune.

_ Next time…  _

~~~~~~~~~~

Glances grew more frequent on both sides of the serving station whenever Yang was unlucky in herself to constantly miss serving her mysterious customer, until luck finally was on her side and she got to serve her.

“Hi there, welcome to Evernight, how can I take your order?”

“Hopefully with that fancy tablet there - tall, blond and hopeless never could manage to get it working every time I’ve spoken to him.” 

Without really thinking, Yang let out a loud chuckle at the girl’s words. “Oh, I can tell I’m going to like you a lot.”

The girl just blushed.

This sort of conversation continued on and on and on, and the Faunus - who Yang learned was named Blake after a couple of her visits to her cashier - seemed to come in later and later. It was small at first, standard even, as someone’s life can quite easily be shifted a couple of minutes or so later through seemingly insignificant changes to routine. 

But over time, Yang noticed the lateness more and more and she and Blake grew closer and closer. Blake’s arrival used to be at the end of the lunchtime rush, about halfway through Yang’s time there on shift. Now, it might as well have been the end of Yang’s daily working hours.

And that made Yang’s final day all the more exciting.

“Really?” Blake asked, genuinely disheartened at the news, seeing the shifts changing over behind the blonde at the counter. Yang saw the effort the Faunus had put in; her purple eyeshadow was bold but not to an overstated degree, her hair, recently cut into a nice little shoulder length bob that Yang adored, washed and dried into natural looking waves, her outfit far more put together than her previous attire when coming in. 

“I’m sorry Blake, Cinder’s decided that she wants me to stay around for the evening shift. Told me about half an hour ago out of nowhere. All I did was mention how you told me to bring a decent change of clothes for the evening..”

Yang felt horrible in saying that; she could tell it stung Blake too. The look in Blake’s eyes was one she never wanted to see again. It was a look of a crestfallen young woman robbed of a date by a bitch of a boss with a personal vendetta against anything fun.

“Yeah, no. Fuck that.” Amber eyes hardened as she took a look out back to spot Cinder. Nowhere in sight at the moment. “Grab your shit. I promised you an evening, I’m giving you a fucking evening.” It took every fibre in her being not to turn beet red and squeak out a meager “Yes Ma’am” at the order, but it was right on the tip of her tongue throughout the entire walk to and from the locker rooms, and it may not have been beet red, but tomato red was pretty good.

“And just  _ where _ do you think  _ you _ are going?” came the unmistakable voice behind her as she walked through the door out onto the floor with the customers. Yang spun around slowly, hoping to remain in Cinder’s good graces by giving her an honest and legitimate reason for this. On looking at the woman as she was now, and with the help of the woman standing behind her, Yang’s decision was made.

“Out, with my girlfriend. My shift ended seven minutes ago, along with everyone else who usually leaves at this time. You told me half an hour before the end of that shift that I was to be staying on for the next few hours. Yeah, not how it works boss. You overwork us, force us into horrid working conditions, and pay us pittance for it all. So do you know what,  _ Cinder, _ ” Yang took the uniform out of her bag, there to be washed for a future day’s work, “you can take your uniform and you can give it to someone who actually  _ wants _ to be here for a change. Because I don’t want to work a job that treats employees like miracle workers and get paid like slaves.” She threw the bundle of deep fry smelling slacks and polo at her boss, then grabbed Blake by the hand. “Consider that my formal resignation.”

It took Yang about a block until reality kicked in. “Ooh, what the fuck have I done?”

“Yang, I have barely gotten to know you. But, in the time I have, I can tell you that you are far too good of a woman to be working in a place like that. Cinder was treating you like cattle back there. Honestly, it would be worth speaking to someone studying Law to get them to maybe help you write a case.”

“Oh that’s easy,” Yang waved off, “I’ve got my friend Weiss. She’s like a well of Law knowledge.”

“Or, you can speak to your very recently acquired  _ girlfriend _ , who just so happened to witness an event taking place in real time.” Yang spun to see a super cocky grin plastered on Blake’s face as  _ that _ was registering in Yang’s mind too, she  _ did _ say ‘girlfriend’ to Cinder, didn’t she?

Well, “girlfriend” definitely wasn’t on the menu where she used to work. Unexpected perk of the job, it seemed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I thought I’d define ‘sweater’ for a laugh, even though I had an idea already planned, but I wasn’t expecting there to be three definitions of the word.   
> The third, unexpected definition, as seen here, is “an employer who works employees hard in poor conditions for low pay.” 
> 
> Well, I had to do that one, didn’t I? Spice things up a wee bit


	30. Piano

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more left 😢

It had been almost two weeks since their little outing to The Bohemian, and the dynamic of the team was different. 

Not in a bad way; there was no possible scenario that could be worse for them all than the one they experienced at the end of the Vytal Tournament, but in an unexpected way.

Yang and Blake’s interactions were far more open than they had previously been. Instead of small glances at each other from the sidelines as neither one of them wanted to make the first move, now they were clear with the way they looked at one another, like two teenagers in love for the first time. Oh wait…

They used to sneak touches every so often, Yang laying a hand on her shoulder here, Blake full on sleeping on Yang’s lap there, on top of the comforting hand holding they did to ground one another. Now?

“Honestly, I know a couple of people that could create some sort of adhesive if you two really want to be attached at the hand forever.”

“Okay, that’s just rude,” Yang replied, brow creasing at the ex-Heiress’ comment. “Can’t we just be ourselves and be happy?”

“Oh, nothing is stopping you from being happy. I certainly am not doing that. I just offered a solution to the permanent physical connection you two seem to wish to share.”

It was all good natured; the Bumbleby pair had been dancing around their feelings for each other ever since Haven, and even though they were far more comfortable with their interactions with one another and were openly more affectionate than they had been at Beacon, there was still no real drive to push that any further than they already had.

That is, until the Open Mic Night at The Bohemian.

The two of them barely spent any time apart when they could and it was appropriate to be; they’d done a couple of missions where they paired up, and there was this unspoken agreement between them that they would act professionally when it came to being Huntresses in the line of work. They had all the social time on Remnant for being a couple.

And with the discovery of one of Blake’s seemingly many secret talents that she kept up her sleeve (seriously though, that woman could twirl knives like a dancer and throw them with such scary accuracy it bordered on the supernatural), often the team would be making trips to Atlas’ Auditorium for some wind down time after missions.

Whilst the prospect may have been a tough one to stomach at first, Weiss grew to enjoy their time in the Auditorium, and even started little performances whenever they went there. Just a simple song or two, but that’s all the rest of Team ORNJ and RWBY needed, or even wanted, to hear. They were aware of Weiss’ clouded past with music, how it was her father’s way of parading his youngest daughter to the world, showcasing her in the spotlight whilst he worked in the shadows behind. 

Her last performance, back after Beacon had fallen and she’d been taken home by her father “for her safety”, had been the most on the nose she had been in terms of how she had felt about him and his actions. She often tried to keep her feelings hidden behind multiple layers of crafted lyrics.

Now, there were no pretenses, no hidden meanings behind the words that she brought to bear. The words were not even hers most of the time, just the words of others in her mouth in a way she was happy to have them. To sing with someone else’s thoughts on your tongue.

And with Blake on piano, it became their own mini concert.

_I found a love_

_Fo~o~or me,_

_Darlin’ just dive right_

_Follow my lead._

_I found a girl,_

_Beautiful and sweet_

_I never knew you were the someone waiting for me._

Weiss had conviction in her voice, getting the point of the song across as she was wont to do when she sang. But this one was not hers to sing. She’d tried convincing her Faunus friend to sing it - Blake’s voice was far more suited to the lower alto register of the song, she was much more of a soprano and a belter - but Blake’s excuse was that she would be “far too distracted to sing properly”.

_‘Cause we were just kids when we fell in love_

_Not knowing what it was_

_I will not give you up this time._

_Darlin’ just kiss me slow,_

_Your heart is all I own._

_And in your eyes your already mine._

Blake kept sneaking glances over the hood of the piano down to the seats, watching as Yang paid attention to the lyrics, but only noticed her in the moment. She felt special, knowing that whilst everyone else in their friend group was watching and paying attention to Weiss singing a love ballad, Yang was staring lovingly at Blake, understanding the intention behind the song choice.

_Baby, I’m_

_Dancing in the dark_

_With you between my arms._

_Barefoot on the grass_

_Listening to our favourite song._

_When you said you looked a mess_

_I whispered underneath my breath,_

_And you heard it,_

_You look perfect tonight._

The giddy smile that grew on Yang’s face as Weiss sang that was telling enough for Blake. And she would continue to inform her girlfriend of this fact until the time she had no more time on Remnant to tell her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song inspiration (and version I recommend listening too to hear how I was hearing it) was Carly Beth’s cover version of Ed Sheeran’s ‘Perfect’: 
> 
> https://youtu.be/3TZuAA2oHy0


	31. Abuse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Despite the heavy title, this final chapter of Bee-tober 2020 is a lighter affair than you'd think

_ {"Brace for impact! Brace for impact!”} _ came the panicked call over the comms as the lights strobed red and the klaxon of death sounded. The navigation aboard the Hallowed Horizon was, for lack of a more appropriate term, FUBAR. And, despite the relative proximity to their homeworld and thus some level of familiarity with the space, the crew opted to ignore the glaring issue of broken systems aboard their spacecraft in favour of returning home for the first time in almost a year for them - how long it would have been for the life they had left behind, Gods only knew.

Well, Gods and scientists, of which most all of them were to varying degrees of qualification, but who really wanted to be pulling up a chalkboard and using the Theories of Special Relativity to discern the answer when they were suddenly flying hull first into the scattered shattered remains of the planet’s moon?

But the scraping and crashing sound that permeated through Hallowed Horizon threw everyone about and let concern, and fear in some cases, seep into the hearts and minds of the crew.

Little Red was particularly distraught about their current situation.

“We should have been home by the end of the week,” she cried into Snow’s shoulder around the central table in the cafeteria once the structural damage had been repaired. “I was supposed to be home to see my family for my birthday.”

“Aren’t you happy you’re alive?” Crimson tutted from the other side of the table. Little Red cried harder because of that, and Snow - along with Shade and Little Red’s sister, Sunny - glared daggers at him. He used his power as Captain of The Hallowed Horizon to make everyone else under his lead feel small at the best of times, but now as they were stranded only a few hundred thousand miles from home (a long way to be sure were they planetside, but astronomically? That distance was a stone’s throw away), a heading dashed and disregarded like it wasn’t a super important one to make for certain members of the crew, he downright flaunted his position around and tried swaying the crew. 

“Who cares if we don’t make it home for your birthday? I know that we’re close enough to the planet that we can get a rescue ship here within a couple of weeks. How do we know it wasn’t you or your friends sabotaging the navigation computers and left us here stranded in space? We have enough supplies to last us 31 more days up here thanks to the last stop off we made, but only enough oxygen for ten days or so if we run around like the bunch of animals you are. As Captain of this ship, I am going to send a signal back to base, and we are going to wait so that we can survive, I don’t give a damn about yo-”

“Captain, that is enough,” Obsidian bit back, Lime and Steel standing by her looking at him much the same. “I’m not sure if it was that crash or something happened back on that planet, but we are capable people. We can fix this mess ourselves and make it back home before they’ve even got a rocket ready to launch.” Seeing Lime and Steel fighting their corner was a surprise - the pair often looked out for themselves on the ship. But having  _ Obsidian _ siding with them, even half-heartedly as she did?! Sunny and Shade looked at each other with the same question on their mind; ‘did we lose all our oxygen and this is some O2 deprived hallucination?’ 

That was not the case, and soon pretty much the entire crew was nigh-mutinying and with Little Red and Obsidian against Captain Crimson. 

He did not like that one bit.

“Fine! Fix this mess  _ but _ from now on we only communicate via our suits’ internal systems. If you insist on fixing this yourselves, we want as much oxygen remaining as we can. Speak only when necessary. I’m sending comms back home.” He stormed off back to his quarters to perform his task, leaving the rest of the crew behind.

A sourceless growl echoed through the room as he left, but he did not turn back.

The last planet they visited, Skeld, was unexpectedly hostile. The frozen tundra of the planet brought with it vile creatures that left those with a far worse fate than death - they assimilated their host, becoming them, but now with the tendencies of that creature.

And that creature tended towards violence.

Golden never stood a chance…

Obsidian had to kill her. A shot through the heart to end the pain quickly. Her action saved the lives of the rest of the crew, but only after they all watched Golden’s own close friends, Cacao and Olive, get killed by the creature possessing her body in front of them all. 

The tears they all shed that night hurt more than anything Golden, Cacao or Olive would have felt. For their lost friends and comrades, but also their partners at home, waiting for the ship to bring their lovers home from the stars.

And now, that growl proved that there was still one among them.

“Stick together,” Obsidian ordered. “Fix what you can as quickly as you can.” She turned to Little Red as she grabbed her helmet. “For the record, kid, I do want you home for your birthday. He just needed a bit of a win so he wouldn’t kill us all.” She turned to her crew - as Second-in-Command, they listened to her. And as someone who  _ didn’t _ treat them like shit, they did so willingly. “Little Red will need two protecting her. If that creature tries anything, we need you alive at the end of this all, else Crimson will never let us live this down.” 

With that, there was a hush throughout the cafeteria as one by one they all slipped their helmets on and split off - Snow went with Steel towards the front of the ship, Little Red and Obsidian went to the front with Lime, and last to leave the area were Sunny and Shade, who moved into the belly of the ship, away from the rest.

[You feeling okay?] Sunny messaged Shade.

[Nervous, but I know what is at stake here] she replied.

[And how’s your little buddy doing?]

There was a pause in communications between the two as they continued walking through the ship and into the Admin area of the Hallowed Horizon. 

Sunny knew about Shade being the victim of their assault on Skeld along with Golden. But whereas Golden fell victim to a standard strain of the creature and paid the ultimate price for it, Shade discovered a kinship with what it described as “A loser of its kind”. The creature ran from their home because, whilst violence was their race’s prominent trait, it was not one universally shared. It ran because the other option was death, but it needed a host to live with and within to save itself. It found Shade, and it gave her strength and powers, but it was always honest with its intentions, and expressed genuine remorse for its bretheren’s actions in leading to Golden’s - and subsequently Cacao’s and Olive’s untimely deaths. 

Its only request was that it remain a secret.

Naturally, Sunny was told the first moment Shade could find, and that almost ended in the pairs’ death if not for Shade’s will to fight the creature and stop it from killing her partner. It knew it had made the right choice for a host when it lost that fight, and allowed Sunny to live with the knowledge as well.

… [It knows my thoughts, and it shares them] was the cryptic reply.

[I know the code to the comms room]

A guttural growl came from Shade, her symbiotic tag along relishing in the idea. There was a nod from Shade, and the two approached the Holomap at the desk. Sure enough, Crimson was in the Communications Room.

Minds set, the three of them headed out towards the starboard of their spaceship.

About three minutes later, Crimson spun around to see Sunny and Shade standing outside the Comms Room doors, Sunny at the keypad outside.

“I thought you were meant to be fixing this damned ship, why are you here?!” 

The pair just stepped through, Sunny entering a code just before walking in, the doors swooshing shut behind them, followed by a dull metal  ***CHNG*** of the bolts sealing the only escape route out of here.

“You…” Crimson cursed, laying the communication device down and stalking around the purple and yellow clad pair. “You’re the beast who stowed away on this Gods forsaken vessel, aren’t you? I should have known it was you. It’s always you.”

“You think you can threaten me, Captain?” Shade replied evenly, helmet under her arm to stare at him without any glass or screen between them. “I am more powerful than you could ever imagine. You cannot stop me, and I can tell you that the creature inside of me will not let you leave this room. You have abused your position, and it decided it needed to take action.”

He laughed at her, mocking her words. “What, so you’re taking orders from your captive now?”

“Well, we’ve  _ graciously _ listened to you for over a year on our voyage, haven’t we?” Sunny bit back. 

Much like the crew’s earlier insubordination, he didn’t take too kindly to that. With a power and speed neither were truly prepared for, Crimson bolted towards Sunny with fury. She didn’t have time to brace herself as he rammed into her, body checking her against the machines at the back of the room. She gasped as the impact winded her, the Captain using the opportunity to land a couple of fast and precise punches to the woman’s form.

“You gave me no choice, curr,” he spat, blue eyes piercing through her visor into her own. “I want you to know that once you two are disposed of, I will keep this ship here as long as I need until everyone is as good as dead. I will lead them back home and they will be  _ thankful _ for me saving their lives. Oh, but I’m not giving your sister an easy time. I will make her suffer for the longest time. I will force her to watch her friends slowly offed one by one by the monster that lurks in this shi- ***GACK!!*** ”

The evil monologue was cut (thankfully) short by a large writhing black tendril that pierced through Crimson’s torso and hoisted him up into the air.

**“I MAY BE FROM A RACE OF MURDEROUS BEINGS”** a facsimile of Shade’s voice combined with a bassy and alien under echo informed the impaled Captain.  **“BUT THE ONLY MONSTER I SAW HERE WAS YOU! I AM DOING THE UNIVERSE A SERVICE.”** Blue eyes glanced backwards to see Shade, but all he was met with was a sight so ungodly to human eyes that all he could do in his final seconds was scream. Even Sunny had to turn away as she heard the sickening wet crunch of a body being bisected by a sudden and viscous toothy maw that sprouted from Shade’s chest.

After the crunching stopped and there was a liquidy thud in front of her, Sunny eventually opened her eyes on hearing the sound of Shade falling to the floor and crying. Sure enough, the woman was huddled up, curled in on herself as her stomach was coated in a glistening sheen of blood, crying at the action she had to take in that moment. And in front of her, the legs of ex-Captain Crimson.

Sunny ran over and hugged Shade; what else was there to do?

They weren’t sure how long they were sitting there and crying over the events that had just taken place, but it was long enough for the rest of the crew to arrive and see the carnage that had transpired in that room. When Sunny realised that Shade was no longer safe, she positioned herself in between her and the crew, eyes burning with a tearful and protective anger.

“...I don’t see anything wrong here,” Obsidian mentioned with a shrug.

“Me neither,” Little Red added.

“Yup, all clear here,” chimed in Steel, with Lime nodding beside him.

“Pity the Captain died oh well,” she said within the same breath, clearly not caring about the outcome of the scenario much like the rest of the crew.

“That blasted monster sure is a crafty one, oooo,” Snow hammed as she shook her fist to the air. Everyone, including Sunny, Shade and an eyestalk of the symbiote inside Shade’s body that had protruded from her back, all turned to stare at her. “What? Too much?”

That got a little chuckle out of Shade. Frankly, they all needed a laugh. The last month in particular had been pretty rough, but they could be glad that it was over now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap!
> 
> Thank y'all so much for reading through this all - this has definitely reignited something in me, so that's always a good sign! 
> 
> Hope you all enjoy your Halloweens to the best of your abilities wherever you are, that you stay safe, and that RWBY Volume 8 (premiering in a week's time for FIRST Members) doesn't mess you up too much 
> 
> Bee Awesome! 🐝


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